What's the complaint? [LWN.net]

What's the complaint?

Posted Mar 4, 2011 7:56 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
In reply to: What's the complaint? by airlied
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

The GPL says quite plainly:

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it.

Whether combining lots of patches into one large patch constitutes a change in "form" would be an argument for the lawyers if this ever goes to court, which I very much doubt.

In my opinion, however, the case is pretty clear -- you simply do not modify that large a patch file. Therefore it's not a "preferred form". Therefore Red Hat is, ideally if not materially, in breach of the GPL.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, not do I play one on TV.

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What's the complaint?

Posted Mar 4, 2011 17:28 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

you don't normally modify patches at all, normally you modify the source file. the tools then mechanically create the patch files.

What's the complaint?

Posted Mar 7, 2011 22:26 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

Forget the details of patches for a second. What matters is, what is the distributor's preferred form for making modifications? If there is a difference between the form they prefer internally and the form they distribute onward, then we have to ask whether the recipients have been short-changed out of their rights. Precisely how much information is a distributor allowed to obfuscate before there is a problem?

E.g. if the patches are of no import to making modifications to a source code, then why have RedHat decided to try get a competitive advantage by withholding them? Clearly RedHat feel having the split-out patches helps them to maintain and modify the kernel they ship. My experience is that having patches (more precisely, access to the history) can be *very* important to making further modifications (finding recently introduced bugs particularly, and modifying them).

I know RedHat is "Good", I know they put in lots of resources into Linux and free software. I really want them to be able to succeed in their business. However, let's be careful to remain dispassionate about this - do any GPL copyright holders involved really want to concede that it's perfectly fine for distributors to deliberately withhold fairly important source-related information? (Obviously some of those copyright holders also have a strong interest in the continuing success of RedHat).

What's the complaint?

Posted Mar 7, 2011 22:41 UTC (Mon) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

How about requiring that they disclose all the internal email threads where they discussed the change too? After all, those might have substantially more useful information about the reasoning behind the change than just the commit message...

What's the complaint?

Posted Mar 7, 2011 23:25 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

I am not a big RedHat fan, but I have no legalistic problem with them not distributing patches, internal e-mail threads, recordings of internal conversations etc.

that doesn't mean that I think what they are doing is good in this area, just that it is within the letter of the rules. I think that them making this change erodes their moral position, but the GPL isn't dependant on people making good decisions for moral reasons, it's only dependant on people making the decisions to comply with the letter of the license (or if it requires more than just compliance with the letter of the license, there may be a need for a license change, but I don't believe that there is)

the only piece I have a legalistic problem is with them releasing code in some form to users, but only under the condition that those users don't redistribute the code (and if the users violate this condition, penalties kick in)

What's the complaint?

Posted Mar 8, 2011 7:38 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

It's still not clear they're following the letter of the licence. Here's what likely is happening:

1. RedHat work on the source in form A

2. Form B is auto-generated from A

3. Form B is distributed to comply with the GPL.

A is the src.rpm with the split patches: the format they've preferred for donkey's years and, I'm presuming to be a dead certainty, are continuing to use internally, and B is the src.rpm with the patches deliberately collapsed. Talking about email or conversations is a misdirection - binaries never get machine-built from such. The patches *are* a source input to the process that builds the distributed src.rpms though, and the reason they are an input is because that's RedHats' preferred means of making modifications.

Look at the flow above again, form B *clearly* is covered by the GPL through the text in which explains what "preferred form" is meant to cover. It's pretty explicit that intermediate transformations of the sources are *not* sufficient, that *all* the files required for input to the build process are required.

Just because an auto-generated file is still human-readable and editable does not take-away from the fact it's not the original source.