The end of Clear Linux [LWN.net]

Intel has announced the abrupt end of its Clear Linux cloud-oriented distribution:

After years of innovation and community collaboration, we're ending support for Clear Linux OS. Effective immediately, Intel will no longer provide security patches, updates, or maintenance for Clear Linux OS, and the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository will be archived in read-only mode. So, if you're currently using Clear Linux OS, we strongly recommend planning your migration to another actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to ensure ongoing security and stability.

to post comments

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 14:15 UTC (Sat) by cpitrat (subscriber, #116459) [Link] (25 responses)

> Effective immediately, Intel will no longer provide security patches

How could someone who used it ever trust a project from Intel again after being let down this way? How costly would it be to give a 6 month heads-up during which security patches are still provided?

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 14:30 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (24 responses)

> How could someone who used it ever trust a project from Intel again after being let down this way?

You're entitled to sue them for breach of contract and/or a full refund.

What's that, you don't have a contract and the software was provided AS IS WITH NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER?
What's that, you didn't pay anything?

Why do you think you're entitled to perpetual support, forever, for free?

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 14:34 UTC (Sat) by beagnach (guest, #32987) [Link] (12 responses)

> Why do you think you're entitled to perpetual support, forever, for free?

Thus is a complete misrepresentation of what the original commenter said. If you can't comment in good faith then it's better to not comment at all.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 15:01 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (11 responses)

> Thus is a complete misrepresentation of what the original commenter said. If you can't comment in good faith then it's better to not comment at all.

Feel free to follow your own advice.

Meanwhile, that "misrepresentation" lies at the underlying heart of the complaint, ie an expectation completely unmoored from reality.

*EVERY* piece of F/OSS out there could shut down tomorrow with zero notice. One uses it (or even _depends_ on it) entirely at their own risk. Absent a contract to the contrary, you have zero right to any support, updates, or any sort maintenance -- ie what you have in your hands _right now_ could easily be all you will ever get.

Don't like that risk? Don't use that software, or pay up for an enforceable support contract. But that will only reduce, not eliminate your risk. For example, the software author could get hit by a truck, or the company you're paying could go out of business because they didn't get enough income to cover costs (ie not unlike ClearLinux).

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 15:06 UTC (Sat) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (4 responses)

I also think that you are completely misinterpreting what cpitrat wrote.
This is about trust. Not about licensing or contracts.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 15:30 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

Trust in what? A quick look at the announcement, and the threads underneath, indicate (a) users expected it to die two years ago (that's a LOT of notice), and (b) it wasn't meant to be a production-grade OS.

Yes it's not nice that it's disappeared at no notice, but it wasn't unexpected. And if it's outlived its usefulness to Intel, why are you surprised? Especially if that purpose/usefulness was explicitly stated (dunno if it was ...) than you CAN trust them to live up to what they say ... even if you don't like it.

Cheers,
Wol

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 17:49 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Yes it's not nice that it's disappeared at no notice, but it wasn't unexpected. And if it's outlived its usefulness to Intel, why are you surprised?

It's worth noting that all of the repositories etc of Clear are still available and are under a F/OSS license, so nothing is stopping anyone from forking everything and picking up where Intel left off. They could probably even call it "Clearer Linux" or something like that.

Of course, it's going to cost a decent amount of money to cover the hosting bill (CI systems, release artefacts, and obscene amounts of bandwidth). And then there's the manpower; putting together a distro that tries to advance the bleeding edge is a lot of work... work that Intel paid for (nearly?) entirely. (All in, I wouldn't be surprised if Clear was costing Intel several million dollars a year)

Without a large (and ongoing) investment in pushing the bleeding edge, Is there much of a point in keeping Clear going? Personally, I doubt it.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 18:39 UTC (Sat) by cpitrat (subscriber, #116459) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't want to feed the troll, but I really want to answer this question (I won't continue the discussion further though):

> Trust in what? A quick look at the announcement, and the threads underneath, indicate (a) users expected it to die two years ago (that's a LOT of notice), and (b) it wasn't meant to be a production-grade OS.

Trust in Intel. The threads actually show that users have been repeatedly worried by rumors that Intel would drop support and Intel officials have repeatedly assured that it wasn't the case. When they finally announce that they drop the support, it's immediately, not in some time in the future. And it's total, not just "only security updates".

In my opinion from a company this size, this doesn't sound reasonable and shows disrespect to their users.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 20, 2025 0:38 UTC (Sun) by marekm (subscriber, #174682) [Link]

+1
The timing looks fairly consistent with Intel's yearly performance review process, I guess quite a few people didn't like being put through "performance improvement" and have decided to leave instead, leaving the project without anyone to work on even minimal level of support for a bit more time (just to show some good faith, even if not guaranteed). And it doesn't necessarily mean those people performed poorly, but certain percentage of people always get the worst rating, it's just how the system works there, and there are ways to make anyone perform poorly (especially in times of layoffs which happen there periodically). Speaking from my personal experience (former Intel employee here), though it was long time ago (2006-2007, in the team working on firmware for the much disliked Intel ME, back then it was an ARC core integrated in the chipset), things may have changed (not necessarily for the better) since then. I was offered to leave at any time and still get 3 months of pay, but decided to continue working for these 3 months anyway (also to get some stock that would vest during that time if I was still an employee), and it was the best 3 months of my work there, much less stressful (could work on something interesting from start to finish, no more task switching with lots of brain cache misses).

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 15:38 UTC (Sat) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (4 responses)

Thanks for confirming your first blatant misrepresentation was not an honest mistake, but done in bad faith.

Fellow subscribers, here's your semi-regular reminder a user filter is available in account preferences and it's a very useful feature.

Enough

Posted Jul 19, 2025 16:22 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (3 responses)

OK folks, come on, do we really need to have this kind of fight today? Let's stop here, please.

Enough

Posted Jul 19, 2025 17:55 UTC (Sat) by mbligh (subscriber, #7720) [Link] (2 responses)

It seems pretty clear who started that nonsense to me.
Suggesting people block him seems entirely proportionate and reasonable.

Enough

Posted Jul 19, 2025 22:35 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

And why? He's one of the "characters" on this site. I know I'm another. There's a few more. We call things as we see it, and we can be opinionated. I think a common trait is we easily get wound up.

Live with it. It's called "life", or, as one of the editors put it, "society". And sometimes we might say something rather surprising, and enlightening. In this particular case, I find the "other side" seem to be part of the FLOSS "entitlement brigade". Other people DON'T owe you a living. Different people have different agendas. Don't blame A for B's actions.

In this particular case, I might be being generous (but I might not, either) the people who said it was going to continue may have been the distro management repeating what they were told. Then all of a sudden someone else pulls the plug. I've had projects cancelled under me that's come as a complete surprise. It would not be in the least surprising if that's what's happened here.

Cheers,
Wol

Enough

Posted Jul 20, 2025 0:25 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> In this particular case, I might be being generous (but I might not, either) the people who said it was going to continue may have been the distro management repeating what they were told. Then all of a sudden someone else pulls the plug. I've had projects cancelled under me that's come as a complete surprise. It would not be in the least surprising if that's what's happened here.

Like you, I've experienced this phenomena, and I consider it to be the most likely explanation. Outside of the C-suite, SVPs, and HR, this would have been strictly need-to-know, enforced with additional NDAs containing financially ruinous penalties if broken (and terminated on the spot if the recipient refused to sign) [1]. Indeed, the Clear Linux folks (including its management) probably only found out about this when they were handed their own pink slips and escorted off-site by security. [2] That "turning out the lights" announcement was probably the CL's manager's final act as an Intel employee.

[1] This happened to my manager at $dayjob-1 a few days before they publicly announced they were shutting down our entire site and moving all operations to India. He came down with a "sudden illness" instead of having to lie to our faces before the announcement.
[2] Metaphorically. Probably.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 20, 2025 9:20 UTC (Sun) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]

I do not think that the matter at stake here are the guarantees that can be expected from FOSS, rather more of a marketing thing. If a big company attaches its name to a product (irrespective of the guarantees it provides) and the users are disappointed (totally irrespective of whether correctly or wrongly), then that is a damage to the company that from that moment on will be perceived in a different way (either slightly different or significantly different), possibly orienting further purchase either directly (by the disappointed ones) or indirectly (by those who heard the message by grapevine communication).

So the point is whether providing some 6 month advance to the distro EOL would have costed more than such damage. Which is a computation difficult to evaluate from the outside as it necessarily takes into account multiple factors, including the situation the company is in, current perception, resilience of positive perception, etc.

Another point is whether it is not overly optimistic to attach the brand name to experiments made for their internal value.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 19:39 UTC (Sat) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (6 responses)

> Why do you think you're entitled to perpetual support, forever, for free?

This sentence, as said elsewhere, is a complete misrepresentation of what the original poster said.

First of all, you had to throw in "perpetual" and "forever", I suppose to try to make your position sound better which only widened the distance with the original comment. They said "six months". To replace this with "perpetual" and "forever" is a significant misrepresentation even if you ignore everything else.

Second, all the poster did was ask a question and it was not a question about entitlement. It was about trust. Nobody questions Intel's right to shut-down their own project. Nobody is saying they are entitled to anything from Intel.

The point is that Intel created something and ASKED people to use it. They promoted it. They told you it could be relied upon. People supported Intel. There may not have been a contract but their was investment on both sides.

Now to reward the people that supported Intel in their efforts, Intel is leaving these people with a zero-day support issue--the need to migrate to something else without any time to do it.

The question therefore is "How could someone who used it ever trust a project from Intel again?" Said another way, "Should we assume that this will happen to us if we work with Intel in the future?" And the answer is yes. And the suggestion is, Intel could have avoided this outcome for a very small investment.

I am not contractually obligation to invest in Intel's future initiatives. And, even if they are contractually obligated to me, I am not sure I trust them? Probably better to avoid relying on Intel for anything. Making sense?

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 19, 2025 20:54 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (5 responses)

> The point is that Intel created something and ASKED people to use it. They promoted it. They told you it could be relied upon. People supported Intel. There may not have been a contract but their was investment on both sides.

Did Intel actually say it could be relied upon? (and what does "relied upon" even mean, really?)

After all, I'm not the only one who remembers Intel saying it shouldn't be used for production purposes. (That's not to say it wasn't useful in other contexts)

Meanwhile, all investments carry risk, and many fail every day. ("past performance is not indicative of future results")

Clear's main purpose was marketing; ie showcasing the performance gains of Intel's hardware products, and it was entirely paid for by Intel's profits from said products. Putting aside the question of whether or not Clear ever resulted in attributable revenue coming in (which is highly unlikely) those profits (and performance) have not existed for several *years* now, and are not likely to return for several more... if ever. The writing was on the wall several rounds of layoffs ago.

"trusting" a for-profit company to continue provide a service that has negative margins is foolish, even when it's not bleeding literally billions of dollars in losses.

Yes, this shutdown-with-no-notice sucks to its users. But I'm sure the now-unemployed folks that were working on Clear would have preferred a different outcome too.

...But if "trust in Linux Distributions" is what you're after, there's always Debian.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 20, 2025 3:39 UTC (Sun) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (2 responses)

@pizza

Did Intel promote Clear Linux? Did they tell people to use it?

Well, let's look at the still existing About page for Clear Linux:
https://www.clearlinux.org/about.html

The sentence with the largest font on that page says this: "Try out the Clear Linux OS Desktop now and enjoy the benefits of a Linux* Desktop designed with the developer in mind".

It literally says TRY...CLEAR LINUX...NOW. Then there are a couple of pages talking about how great it is. Ya, I think Intel promoted it.

The point is that it is a bit shit to ask people to adopt your stuff and then kill it zero-day style. I am not sure how saying that it is also bad to terminate employees without notice counters that point at all. Presumably those employees are getting some notice or payment in lieu of (though I have no knowledge). If not, ya that is also bad behaviour.

Nobody here seems to have much of a counter for what the original poster said. So, instead of addressing his argument, we pivoted to attacking him for relying on something made by a big company. How does this answer his question?

Anyhoo, I have never used Clear Linux. I mostly use Chimera Linux, Arch, or Endeavour with Arch Linux in a distrobox where needed. I mean, I am sure I spun up Clear Linux at least once but it does not impact me at all that Intel is cutting it. However, I totally agree with the original comment and I will consider this move before adopting anything that relies on Intel. Which answers the question that the original poster posed.

As for the wisdom on relying on big companies...I am a Linux user. The majority of the essential packages in my distro are provided, for free, by large companies. If you are a Linux user, that is true for you too. So, I am not sure I buy into the argument you are trying to make. But I have no interest in that argument really.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 20, 2025 6:46 UTC (Sun) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> It literally says TRY...CLEAR LINUX...NOW. Then there are a couple of pages talking about how great it is. Ya, I think Intel promoted it.

I read the entire page. Yes, it's "promoting" stuff: but certainly not long-term support.

I haven't yet seen a Linux distribution that says "don't use us".

The best summary is this:

> > Putting aside the question of whether or not Clear ever resulted in attributable revenue coming in (which is highly unlikely) those profits (and performance) have not existed for several *years* now, and are not likely to return for several more... if ever. The writing was on the wall several rounds of layoffs ago.
> > "trusting" a for-profit company to continue provide a service that has negative margins is foolish, even when it's not bleeding literally billions of dollars in losses.

Is this shutdown pleasant? No, of course not.
Is it any kind of surprise? Obviously and absolutely not. Asking for six more months is very naive at best.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 24, 2025 3:51 UTC (Thu) by sionescu (subscriber, #59410) [Link]

> It literally says TRY...CLEAR LINUX...NOW

That's like the ice cream monger offering you a sample. There was no guarantee or promise of future support.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 24, 2025 2:46 UTC (Thu) by Funcan (guest, #44209) [Link] (1 responses)

"past performance is not indicative of future results"

I think the whole point here is that it often does, and people should be wary of relying on Intel projects in future, because there's evidence that they have even less respect for their users than Google (who at least generally give enough warning to get your data moved over in an orderly manner before shutting down projects).

They're absolutely allowed to do that, but people can and should draw their own conclusions from that behaviour

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 24, 2025 12:42 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> people should be wary of relying on Intel projects in future

...Because Intel (like any other F/OSS producer or contributor) could decide to arbitrarily stop doing so at any point in the future?

> because there's evidence that they have even less respect for their users than Google (who at least generally give enough warning to get your data moved over in an orderly manner before shutting down projects).

So... What user data did Intel delete? How many existing Clear deployments were bricked and no longer function?

The answer to both questions is *none*.

Every instance of Clear that is currently deployed continues to work today just as well as it ever did. It just won't get any future updates from Intel.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 22, 2025 9:26 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (3 responses)

I am entitled to never trust such a company ever again.

I am old enough that by now I only trust in stable communities, when they break usually enough people are there to pick up the pieces.

When some CEO gets a brain fart he does not care what everyone was assuring people just seconds ago. He will kill what he/she/* wants.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 22, 2025 11:29 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> I am entitled to never trust such a company ever again.

Of course what you trust (or not) is entirely up to you.

I just question why you *ever* did so in the first place, especially in the absence of any "trustable" promises.

> I am old enough that by now I only trust in stable communities,

As you continue to gain real-world experience, you will find that "stable communities" don't actually exist either, and "stable" or not, when it comes to a group of people, there is no such thing as a guaranteed outcome.

...So use whatever software you want, but absent a contract stating otherwise, what you have in your hand right now is all you are ever guaranteed to be able to get. Each release is a one-off gift, nothing more. The authors may abandon it or shut it down entirely. A feature you care about may get cut. You could get banned from accessing the download site (personally, or geopolitically) And so forth.

This is why Free Software matters -- with the complete corresponding source code, it is at least *possible* (in both the technical and legal sense) to support yourself and your use cases. But nobody actually *owes* you anything more than that.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 22, 2025 12:13 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

I trust Debian and other communities to provide me with an mostly working OS with updates and upgrades. That is way better than what Intel was able to provide.

Irresponsible

Posted Jul 22, 2025 12:44 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> I trust Debian and other communities to provide me with an mostly working OS with updates and upgrades. That is way better than what Intel was able to provide.

You know, I actually completely agree with this. And I imagine that Intel would too.

Indeed, they explicitly said to not use Clear for production purposes, and their track record is replete with examples of failing to achieve "a mostly working OS with updates and upgrades".

...Which goes back to my point about placing "trust" in something that never demonstrated (or even claimed) it could be trusted.

Speed of Clear Linux

Posted Jul 19, 2025 16:58 UTC (Sat) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (2 responses)

I remember that this distribution would often come out the winner in benchmarks. I don’t know whether that’s because Intel did a better job with compiler flags to build for their hardware (as long ago with pgcc) or through a better choice of kernel configuration and C standard library or whatever.

Have general-purpose distros like Fedora closed the performance gap since then, and if not, what could replace Clear Linux as the speedy choice?

Speed of Clear Linux

Posted Jul 19, 2025 17:26 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> I remember that this distribution would often come out the winner in benchmarks. I don’t know whether that’s because Intel did a better job with compiler flags to build for their hardware (as long ago with pgcc) or through a better choice of kernel configuration and C standard library or whatever.

It was a combination of all of those, on top of a substantial amount of upstream work to make those individual components faster. [1]

However, keep in mind that Clear Linux's benchmark lead came largely at the expense of backwards compatibility -- if you didn't have the latest-and-greatest processors (or more accurately, instruction set extensions) then Clear simply wouldn't even *boot*,. This is not a compromise that more mainstream (and more general-purpose) distributions were willing to make... at least not at the time.

Today the situation is different; mainstream distributions increasingly target newer processor families (eg RHEL requiring the 12-year-old x86_64v3) and even without that, more and more performance-sensititve upstreams now detect and switch to advanced ISAs at runtime. So Clear Linux's original raison d'etre[2] is mostly moot.

[1] Intel will presumably be continuing most of this upstream work.
[2] Showcasing the performance gains possible when using Intel's newest processors -- in other words, marketing.

Speed of Clear Linux

Posted Jul 19, 2025 18:12 UTC (Sat) by rossburton (subscriber, #7254) [Link]

The reason Clear won in phoronix benchmarks is partly down to it exporting CFLAGS=-O3 in the default environment. No other distribution does that, and phoronix doesn’t reset the environment.

So Sad But Unexpected

Posted Jul 20, 2025 2:00 UTC (Sun) by ware (guest, #83607) [Link] (1 responses)

The amount of surprise I see in this (and Intel moving away from other open source projects) asymptomaticly approaches zero.

It makes me exceedingly sad.

So Sad But Unexpected

Posted Jul 20, 2025 2:01 UTC (Sun) by ware (guest, #83607) [Link]

Should have said *expected*. Doh!

Intel contracting in size

Posted Jul 20, 2025 12:31 UTC (Sun) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Seems like Intel is contracting in size in general, another recent headline:

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2025/07/intels-...

It can be forked, but it probably won't be

Posted Jul 20, 2025 23:24 UTC (Sun) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

It is not surprising that commercial companies stop development of open source software when they feel that it's no longer beneficial for them. Clear Linux is not Intel's core product. A CPU bug would generate much more bad publicity than dropping a Linux distro.

Open source software that is really valuable continues being maintained by volunteers. I don't see it happen for Clear Linux, it's a lot of work for little benefit. But maybe the developers who worked on Clear Linux would join other distros and bring their experience.

CRA?

Posted Jul 21, 2025 20:49 UTC (Mon) by philh (subscriber, #14797) [Link] (6 responses)

The EU's Cyber Resiliency Act has the potential to cost commercial entities large amounts in fines if they are found to have done a poor job on software released to the market.

It wouldn't surprise me if they just decided to side-step that by instead contributing to upstreams and distros, making it someone else's problem, or nobody's problem since non-profits seem to mostly get a free-pass.

CRA?

Posted Jul 21, 2025 21:49 UTC (Mon) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (5 responses)

> The EU's Cyber Resiliency Act has the potential to cost commercial entities large amounts in fines if they are found to have done a poor job on software released to the market.

> <...> or nobody's problem since non-profits seem to mostly get a free-pass

I think it was discussed multiple times (not sure where though; either here or on Lobsters) that for the purposes of CRA "releasing [software] to the market" carries a very specific meaning, which is explicitly not applicable to free (and gratis) software projects publicly released on the Internet — even if they are developed by large corporations, I believe?

I hope I'm not misstating this, though. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could clarify.

CRA?

Posted Jul 21, 2025 23:37 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

I think the technical term is "place on the market", not release, but yes. It has a very particular meaning, which can basically be summed up as "advertised for sale". So Free Software, by definition, can NOT be "placed on the market".

There's nothing stopping a manufacturer taking out a support contract with the team behind a Free Software product, at which point in a sense the software has been placed on the market, but legally it's the support contract.

The point of the CRA is that all software must come with the digital equivalent of a CE mark - an official certificate that confirms the software complies with European rules. And a CE mark is a game of "follow the contract" - there *must* be a chain of liability, and without a contract that chain is broken.

The neat thing also, is that if a manufacturer takes a FLOSS program and includes it in their product, without a support contract not only are they on the hook for fixing any relevant bugs, but they are obliged to offer their fixes to upstream. Although, as ?pizza pointed out a long while ago, if the bug is in functionality they don't use, the fix could be as simple as ripping that functionality out. A fix that upstream is unlikely to accept. This is counterbalanced, however, by the fact they are now maintaining a (potentially costly) fork, so it's in their interests to get a proper fix in. Even if it is just a build-time switch to disable the functionality, that they always enable. But that will motivate other people to fix the problem ...

Cheers,
Wol

CRA?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 9:10 UTC (Tue) by philh (subscriber, #14797) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not a lawyer, but having heard lawyers discuss this I don't think it's quite this straight-forward.

Let's say a vendor were to release a (perhaps vast, perhaps obfuscated) patch against e.g. the kernel, that makes their hardware run faster than the competition, I think a court might well agree that even though the software is free, it's being released for reasons of commercial gain and so when the patch turns out to be buggy, the CRA should apply.

If that's correct, then it's wise to switch to working exclusively upstream, and if vendors learn that lesson it will be better than all the unmaintainable vendor patches we've seen in the past, so that would be a symptom of the CRA doing its job.

CRA?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 10:51 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I like that :-) I don't think it works quite the way you describe, though :-)

> Let's say a vendor were to release a (perhaps vast, perhaps obfuscated) patch against e.g. the kernel, that makes their hardware run faster than the competition, I think a court might well agree that even though the software is free, it's being released for reasons of commercial gain and so when the patch turns out to be buggy, the CRA should apply.

So they're releasing it to encourage people to buy their hardware? From what you say, it's unlikely to be upstreamed, so the patch will be abandon-ware. If it is upstreamed, there's no contract, no formal relationship, the CRA does not apply, and upstream is on the hook (even more reason for upstream to reject it).

> If that's correct, then it's wise to switch to working exclusively upstream, and if vendors learn that lesson it will be better than all the unmaintainable vendor patches we've seen in the past, so that would be a symptom of the CRA doing its job.

Very much so! Because as soon as Red Hat, or Dell, or whoever start selling hardware with linux installed, or support contracts, they now have a contractual relationship, and they ARE on the hook under the CRA, and they will not want to touch this junk with a bargepole!

So this hypothetical vendor, instead of *gaining* by releasing this obfuscated mess, has just given the hardware guys every reason to *avoid* buying their hardware, and given all the distos even more reason to patch their software *out* of their distro in order to avoid liability.

As I keep saying, "follow the contract", which is why big companies can release and support FLOSS, and avoid liability, but because the only way they can avoid liability is also to avoid any contracts, they are forced to be *full* members of the FLOSS community (as far as that software is concerned).

Cheers,
Wol

CRA?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 8:58 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

> that for the purposes of CRA "releasing [software] to the market" carries a very specific meaning

Not just the CRA, for all EU law. In many areas the EU is by treaty limited to regulating the common/single market. Saying "placing on the [common/single] market" is just a term of art for "limiting this regulation to that which we actually have authority over".

It's the EU's version of the "interstate commerce clause", except it's 200 years newer. It covers more (trade within a member state can be regulated) and less (private/non-commercial transactions are excluded, even if they cross borders). It also seem less susceptible to scope creep compared to the US version.

CRA?

Posted Jul 22, 2025 9:31 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The reason that this is all a bit shaky is that placing on the market as a term of art applies to free (and gratis) software projects, too, and the CRA has very specific exemptions to cover "normal" open source activities. This is quite deliberate, because the Act's drafters do not want to exempt "open core" from the CRA's requirements (e.g. just because a bug is in AOSP should not mean that Google is exempt from the CRA's provisions as they apply to Pixel phones), nor do they want to create a situation where you release a "data collection" app as open source (depending on your Internet services to do anything useful) and get exempted, where your competitor who does all the work on-device is not exempt.

Instead, there's two significant classes of exception, which are intended to cover most FOSS activities:

Where you give away the software for free, separately to hardware, permit onwards distribution under the same terms as direct distribution from you and you neither collect personal data not necessary to the operation of the software, nor accept donations in excess of your costs. This is intended to cover most personal projects; if you take code you wrote, slap a FOSS licence on it, and upload it to Savannah or equivalent services, this exception covers you. It should also cover a lot of corporate open source, but it pushes companies wanting to be under this exception into a place where they have no way to prevent a competitor hiring away their developers and making more money from the project that the originating company did.
Where the previous exception does not apply, but you act as an "open source steward" (which means accepting contributions from outside your organisation on the same terms as you licence the final product, as one example), you are covered, but you cannot be fined for a breach of the Act. You still face the other penalties in the Act (e.g. being required to take the project off the market if you can't fix your security processes quickly enough), but there's no monetary penalty for breaching the Act, only for keeping the project on the market yourself after failing to meet the required schedule for fixing things. This one's meant to cover things like CentOS Stream

In this specific case, Clear Linux should come under the first exception; it doesn't collect personal data, you can't give them money, and you're allowed to redistribute Clear Linux under the same terms as Intel.