It's not so simple [LWN.net]

It's not so simple

Posted Mar 1, 2011 10:31 UTC (Tue) by ekj (guest, #1524)
In reply to: It's not so simple by pLub
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

This is true -- i.e. it's possible to do that modification, even without the patches, and the information is available elsewhere for those who invest the time to do the detective-work.

Adding to this workload was however, if we are to believe the information in the comments here, *explicitly* stated as the reason for the change.

Notice that the GPL does not say "possible", it says "prefered", and a naked kernel-tree with no history, no changesets, no version-control is definitely not the "prefered" starting-point for making changes. (the prefered starting-point seems to be a clone of somebodys git-tree)

When someone changes the distributed form of the kernel-source, explicitly to make it LESS convenient to make changes, it's questionably if the same people can at the same time claim that they distribute it in the prefered form for making changes.

Like I said: I've got no idea how the law would interpret it, but it's definitely against the *spirit* of the GPL. (which is: you should give me the source-code in the form that is *prefered* for making changes, i.e. the form that is most convenient.) Making changes explicitly to make life *less* convenient for people who want to make changes to the code, certainly conflicts with the spirit of that.

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It's not so simple

Posted Mar 2, 2011 7:34 UTC (Wed) by pLub (guest, #73230) [Link]

> This is true -- i.e. it's possible to do that modification, even without the patches, and the information is available elsewhere for those who invest the time to do the detective-work.

In theory, there is one kind of modification which is helped by the presence of the patch list, namely reverting a patch. In practice, riel said above that on a modern kernel this is made much harder by the fine-grained structure of the patches. I'll take his word for it.

But if you agree with me that you can do the same work with an upstream clone, you're not talking about _that_ modification, you're talking about _another kind_ of modification. You're talking about one of the following:

1) backporting a patch into the Red Hat kernel from stable, or upstream, or from another distro kernel. In this case the patch wouldn't obviously be in the Red Hat SRPM, so the patches wouldn't help.

2) backporting a patch from the Red Hat kernel to stable, or to the Debian kernel (it is not a coincidence that the problem was raised by a Debian kernel maintainer). In this case the patches obviously help, but in this case you're not talking about modifications to the Red Hat kernel! And the GPL talks about "preferred form for modification" of what you're distributing, not modification of something else.

Besides, I would rather avoid talking about the spirit of the GPL, since it is a very multifaceted spirit. For example, unlike other licenses it includes the "right" for you to make money on Free Software (for example from support), and Red Hat is obviously exercising it.