Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 15, 2020 9:25 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Changing CentOS in mid-stream by paulj
Parent article: Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Oh, and note I didn't mention history. I reference the information about the fixes and changes that were made to the stock kernel.

Your src.rpm form has the ability - indeed was /designed/ - to convey the original code and each change separately (the source and "patches") in a way that preserved this critical information. RedHat long created src.rpms of the kernel (from some other SCM I think) with the stock kernel code as the source, and the changes as patches. RedHat deliberately chose to collapse the source, and remove that information - critical to the preferred form for working with that code - to disadvantage others.

You could either publish the git, or (again) split out the source and each change as a patch in the src.rpm.

Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 15, 2020 11:10 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (6 responses)

Oh, and if that src.rpm format doesn't scale, and hence the git version is the only /workable/ way to deal with that information, well... Refer to the definition of "source code" in the licence you're obliged to follow again.

Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 15, 2020 13:52 UTC (Tue) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link] (5 responses)

I'm pretty sure that Red Hat employs better lawyers than you (and me). So all I can say is "well, that's just like, your opinion, man".

Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 17, 2020 23:58 UTC (Thu) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link] (4 responses)

What about the spirit of the license, does that matter or is that just my opinion?

Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 18, 2020 0:12 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

> What about the spirit of the license, does that matter or is that just my opinion?

Who is going to determine what the "spirit" of the license is and how is that going to be enforced?

A license is a legal agreement. If something is not covered explicitly by the terms of the license that it is intended to cover, that is just a bug and should be fixed. Having clarity within the license is more effective than attempting to attach unspecified terms outside of it.

Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 18, 2020 1:11 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> If something is not covered explicitly by the terms of the license that it is intended to cover, that is just a bug and should be fixed.

And then that bug-fixed version of the license will get rejected by those intentionally taking advantage of the gray areas in the old license, while accusing its creators as being clueless zealots who are out of touch with what businesses need from "modern" software development.

Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 18, 2020 1:42 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

>And then that bug-fixed version of the license will get rejected by those >intentionally taking advantage of the gray areas in the old license

...Which is fine. Arguably this already happened with GPLv2 and GPLv3. The old and new versions have clear delineations and the choices are transparent to everyone as opposed to talking about the nebulous spirit of the license which really can mean anything from "The author of the license thinks this way" to "the project using the license thinks it should be interpreted this way" to "this person in LWN who is connected to neither wishes the license has this expanded interpretation although the plain reading of the license doesn't really say that". It is not the job of a software license to mandate healthy best practices around a community. If that was the case, even GNU wouldn't past that test given that bash git changelog has a lot of tarballs checked in directly on a routine basis.

Changing CentOS in mid-stream

Posted Dec 18, 2020 1:17 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Who is going to determine what the "spirit" of the license is and how is that going to be enforced?

The musings/writings of (people within) the FSF is a good determinant of the GPL. If the wording of a licence is not clear a Judge has two options - to interpret it in favour of the defendant(s), or to interpret it in the light of explanatory text by the authors. Both are valid approaches.

And I think, in UK courts, Judges have been known to read Hansard and use the contents thereof to ignore the explicit black letter of the law on the basis that "MPs were misled when asked to vote on it".

Cheers,
Wol