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Red Hat and the GPLRed Hat and the GPLPosted Mar 9, 2011 16:56 UTC (Wed) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791)Parent article: Red Hat and the GPL
1. The GPL only imposes an obligation on RedHat to those is distributes to. Not to anyone else.
2. The GPL does not require RedHat to reveal the patches unless those patches are distributed as items as separate items. That may be the case here, I have not looked at the details.
3. The GPL requires RedHat to share the source of the final product that is distributed with those it distributes to. Those receiving that source can use common GNU tools for building patches themselves, though this will not help them understand much about why the differences are there.
4. It has been a courtesy and a matter of honor that distributors have shared patches. The GPL does not demand it. Any obligation to share patches is outside of the obligations of the GPL and is a matter of contracts beyond the GPL.
RedHat is honoring its GPL obligations by providing the source for its product to its customers. It is protecting itself, as much as it can, by withholding the information for how it got from one distribution to the next.
RedHat is still operating Fedora and that has been and will continue to be a great tool for promoting Linux and educating the public. It is less stable and less suitable than enterprise versions for business purposes but that is intentional. It is the proving ground after all.
Making an enterprise class distribution is very expensive. How long did it take RedHat to lock down, verify, and test RHEL 6 before releasing it? It large team of engineers, time, and equipment. I think the beta was out at least 6 months before the official release. Now companies have started up relying on RedHat to carry the water while they are not obligated to contribute to this hardening process. That is not fair.
I wish people would calm down. This bickering is only a source of laughter for Microsoft and it's proprietary buddies. The Open Source business model was established on a model of trust. We struggle daily with how we honor that trust and the obligations that it imposes on us while we are trying to put bread on our tables. While honorable people are growing in ways that benefit everyone, less honorable people are looking for ways to game the legal system to make a buck at other's expense. I think that RedHat is trying to find a way to protect itself from the less hororable type.
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Not quite Posted Mar 9, 2011 17:00 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Without addressing the real point of your comment, let me note that your point "1" above is incorrect. Unless the source distribution accompanies the binary distribution, the GPL obligates distributors to make the code available to any third party who asks for it. That's an important aspect of the license to understand.
Not quite Posted Mar 9, 2011 17:47 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
RogerOdle's comment would have been correct *if* RH was the sole copyright holder of the kernel. Of course, it is not.
Not quite Posted Mar 9, 2011 21:44 UTC (Wed) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]
[IANAL]
I do not see an obligation to distribute source to third-parties in the GPL. It declares the rights of those immediately downstream from the distributor to receive source code. Third-party rights are unclear. A third party is entitled to receive source from the second party in the direct distribution chain but how do these rights propagate upward to the original distributor?
I see no obligation to distribute source to parties that are not in the distribution chain. If you allow public downloading of binaries then each download is a distribution and source must be available for each download. If you distribute to specific parties then your obligation is to those specific parties but not to the public.
Section 10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.
This section releases the distributor from obligations to enforce the GPL terms on third parties.
This may be nit picking but it is important to know what you obligations and rights are.
Not quite Posted Mar 9, 2011 21:58 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I do not see an obligation to distribute source to third-parties in the GPL. It declares the rights of those immediately downstream from the distributor to receive source code. Third-party rights are unclear. From the license text:
You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following... b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange... (Emphasis added). Seems pretty clear to me...
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 9, 2011 21:03 UTC (Wed) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]
"3. The GPL requires RedHat to share the source of the final product that is distributed with those it distributes to. Those receiving that source can use common GNU tools for building patches themselves, though this will not help them understand much about why the differences are there."
Minor caveat: This is true IFF the files have diligently been marked up, as required by the license, with the nature of the changes made to them in each successive change and all of those markings (if there are multiple changes in a file) have been preserved. If, as is often the case, that information is only in the changelog, then you can't reconstruct the successive patches, but only a single patch that applies the net result of the whole sequence of changes to a particular file.
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 9, 2011 22:05 UTC (Wed) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]
In regards to the GPL, the only requirement I can see to report changes to the source is
"5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
and optional requirement
"7. Additional Terms.
Neither of these imposes an obligation to provide detailed accounting of changes or to produce patches.
The only GPL requirement that I can see is to produce the source code that is necessary to build the binary product.
If there is a patch requirement then it is by agreement outside of the GPL. This does not mean that a source distribution requirement can not be satisfied by distributing a patch. It is probably more efficient to do so. But I do not see that as a legal requirement.
If you can find a legal requirement in the GPL to produce patches then please show us. Let us try to avoid creating opportunities for FUD by declaring obligations that aren't there.
I am uncomfortable with implied obligations in contracts. If you think patch reporting is an important enough of a burden to impose on developers then ask the community to add it to the next version of the GPL in an unambiguous manner. I think this is just opening a can of worms.
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 9, 2011 22:14 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] You are looking at GPLv3! Given that the context here is the kernel, you really need to be looking at GPLv2.
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 9, 2011 22:59 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
> Given that the context here is the kernel, you really need to be looking at GPLv2.
Though, if one is discussing a problem with GPLv2 one might look at the GPLv3 to see if, and how, the author of the GPLv2 (the FSF) tried to solve that specific problem in the GPLv3. So it could provide reasons for a certain interpretation of the GPLv2.
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 10, 2011 1:34 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]
Mr. Corbet is spot-on here.
Linus Torvalds quite deliberately chose to go with version 2 of the GNU GPL, and not any other version. Certainly not "any later version, as published by the Free Software Foundation".
It'd be a funny old world if this matter ended up in court and the judge accepted RMS as an expert witness to expound upon the rationale behind the GNU GPL, while refusing to hear from Linus Torvalds, the leading copyright holder in the work in question.
(N.B., for all I know, Linus is 100% cool with Red Hat's move. If the TiVo lockdown didn't bother him, I don't know what would.)
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 11, 2011 17:31 UTC (Fri) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link] GPLv2 actually requires more here than GPLv3. Although GPLv3 only requires the work as a whole to carry a prominent notice that you modified it, GPLv2 requires it of individual modified files:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
Distributing the original source plus the patches would meet this requirement, at least in spirit although perhaps one could argue that for the modified files to carry prominent notices you'd actually have to insert obnoxious comments into the files themselves, rather than providing that information "out-of-band" in the patch set.
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 18, 2011 19:06 UTC (Fri) by mishad (guest, #69757) [Link]
> Although GPLv3 only requires the work as a whole to carry a prominent notice that you modified it, GPLv2 requires it of individual modified files:
Does that mean that GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv3.?
That is, that GPLv2 code cannot be incorporated into a GPLv3 derived work, because of the "no additional restrictions" clause?
Surely not?
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 18, 2011 19:24 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Yes, it does mean precisely that. Unless a codebase is licensed under GPLv2 or later, it typically cannot be incorporated with GPLv3 code.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#GPL_Compatib...
Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 12, 2011 20:37 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
my issue on this topic is around your point #2
RedHat _does_ distrbute the patches as separate items, but only to people who get a redhat support contract (no problem so far), and only under the condition that they don't redistribute the patches (under penalty of having their support contract terminated). It's this "don't redistribute" portion that I have a problem with
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