This might violate GPL
This might violate GPL
Posted Jun 22, 2023 11:23 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)In reply to: This might violate GPL by matp75
Parent article: Red Hat cutting back RHEL source availability
What countries make it illegal for me to refuse to sell a service to someone? The only cases I'm aware of involve refusal based on a legally protected characteristic (e.g. I can't refuse to sell to you for being a woman, or disabled, or based on skin colour).
Posted Jun 22, 2023 12:18 UTC (Thu)
by skissane (subscriber, #38675)
[Link] (2 responses)
Under Australian competition law, "it may be illegal for a business with substantial market power to refuse to supply its goods or services without a legitimate reason" https://www.accc.gov.au/business/selling-products-and-ser...
Does Red Hat have "substantial market power"? Would refusal to license their software to competitors constitute a "legitimate reason"? That's a question for the the regulator and the courts.
Posted Jun 22, 2023 13:44 UTC (Thu)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
That's not what RH is doing, has ever done, or can ever do. Because GPL and other F/OSS licenses don't let you discriminate. There is almost [1] nothing that RH ships that can't be obtained elsewhere.
Remember, we're not talking about "RH software" here, we're talking about "RH services". Absent a contract of some sort, there's nothing that entitles anyone to Red Hat services, in *any* jursidiction.
Meanwhile, "breach of contract" has routinely been upheld as a "legitimate reason" to not do (repeat) business with someone.
[1] The only exceptions are proprietary stuff that RH has acquired, but to the best of my knowledge they've always eventually released those things as F/OSS.
Posted Jun 22, 2023 16:05 UTC (Thu)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
I would be surprised if the regulator found that RH had substantial market power, and I would also be surprised if "intends to break the terms of the contract they are agreeing to" is not a legitimate reason to refuse a sale - remember that this is just about the Red Hat services, not about the licences on the software (which you can get from Red Hat without the support services, via CentOS Stream).
Substantial market power would require the market to be one where you can't substitute Ubuntu LTS (Canonical), SLES (SuSE), nor can you substitute RHEL-compatible distros like Oracle Enterprise Linux, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, ClearOS, Miracle Linux. Given the sheer amount of compatible choice (OEL, CentOS etc), and two commercial alternatives that aren't hard to port to (Ubuntu and SLES), I can't see how a regulator would decide that Red Hat's commercial offerings represent substantial market power - not least because it's trivial to move to a compatible alternative from someone else.
Posted Jun 26, 2023 18:34 UTC (Mon)
by matp75 (subscriber, #45699)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 26, 2023 19:26 UTC (Mon)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
The question would be whether a legitimate expectation that you will violate the contract you agree to when buying the service is sufficient to refuse to sell you a service covered by that contract - my understanding is that such a violation is one of the exceptional conditions, even in business to consumer sales (albeit that the permissible contract terms are very restricted in B2C sales in France).
This might violate GPL
This might violate GPL
This might violate GPL
This might violate GPL
but looks like from this page , it is dependent if the buyer is considered a consumer and there are very few exceptional conditions.
I have seen it used between 2 business for software (just could not refuse to sell at list price) (the vendor sold it to not be sued even if the buyer attitude was very incorrect and unfair at that time)
This might violate GPL