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Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Feb 28, 2011 19:22 UTC (Mon) by branden (guest, #7029)
In reply to: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source by hp
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

The question turns on how you (well, Red Hat and the copyright holders in the kernel, really) want to define "form".

Ordinarily this wouldn't be a very interesting question, and I'd be inclined to view Red Hat's packaging decisions with latitude.

However, in the instant case, the act which brought this matter to the attention of LWN's readership was an act of obfuscation of the source.

Wherever the boundary line of the GPLv2's definition of source code is drawn, this decision has moved Red Hat's kernel SRPMS away from its uncontroversial center.

to post comments

"Preferred form for modification" in GPL

Posted Mar 1, 2011 13:12 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

Sorry, but in what way I (as a very minor contributor to Linux) would like to define "prefered form for modifying" of whatever I added is probably totally irrelevant, a court of law would have to sort that out.

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 1, 2011 14:46 UTC (Tue) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, the actual definition of " preferred form" is quite important.

It's also debatable which is why it is silly to declare so simply that they are violating the GPL

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 1, 2011 23:34 UTC (Tue) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Having turned many megabytes of patches to XFree86 from one huge monolith into something resembling changeset patches years ago, and having a pretty damn good idea of what that cost in terms of person-hours, I'm comfortable with my interpretation.

The purpose of GNU GPL is, in part, to keep end users from having to jump through ridiculous or high-cost hoops to make a work of software operate as they desire.

If the Red Hat kernel engineers don't work with a giant monolithic patch, then they are imposing a tax on the rest of the community by forcing everyone else to swallow one.

If I were a copyright holder in the kernel, I'd be talking to the SFLC right about now.

Maybe no copyright holders in the kernel share my interpretation. That's fine; it's their prerogative. My view is that Red Hat is doing the Wrong Thing(tm) here, and if the GNU GPL is a sufficiently long lever to get them to revert their decision, good. If it's not, the perhaps the weight of public opinion will be.

They've clearly made a choice that no sane and educated person can regard as friendly to the community. Part of the solution is to shine light and attention on this hostile decision until they find a better way to solve whatever problem it is they're trying to solve.

Telling the world what that problem is, exactly, would be a great first step.


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