Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model [LWN.net]

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 0:39 UTC (Sat) by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836)
Parent article: Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

This has in effect broken any free software licence which ties the obligation to provide source to the distribution of binaries, and then allows the freedom to control distribution of binaries. While IBM Red Hat may magnanimously refrain from exercising the full power of their legal hack, it doesn't mean others will be so restrained.

I wonder if it can be fixed. Someone who holds copyright or the right to re-license can publish future versions under any licence they like, and free software licences can't restrain that, but Red Hat would not have either right for enough of RHEL.

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Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 0:57 UTC (Sat) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (7 responses)

As I mentioned in a comment on the previous article about this situation, this has already been fixed by the AGPL for the vast majority of real use cases. Nobody is running RHEL just to use it locally.

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 1:31 UTC (Sat) by developer122 (guest, #152928) [Link] (2 responses)

The AGPL is a garbage non-free licence. See marcan's post at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30495647

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 8:50 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

Agreed. Bradley never explained how a software can make a legally binding offer, which is the crux of the AGPL.

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 29, 2023 21:37 UTC (Thu) by milesrout (subscriber, #126894) [Link]

I don't think marcan understands the AGPL at all. He seems to think contracts are code and all you need to do is execute them according to some abstractly-defined rules. Courts aren't computers!

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 12:59 UTC (Sat) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (2 responses)

The AGPL is also unusable for most real use cases. Suppose OpenSSL or GnuTLS switches to the AGPL. How are you going to offer me source when I connect to your server with a TLS client? Would it even suffice to write an RFC to add a special extension to the ServerHello to offer a link to source code, if you know that no other software implements that RFC? I don't think you have any argument that the AGPL wouldn't require you to offer source in this case:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software.

I'm a user. I'm interacting with it remotely through a computer network. Your software definitely supports such interaction. The fact that I'm connecting with openssl s_client instead of a web browser is your legal problem, not mine.

Suppose the Linux kernel switches to the AGPL. How are you going to offer me source when I connect to your server with a TCP client? Suppose 389 Directory Server switches to the AGPL, or Kubernetes does. Suppose your IRC client does and I send you something with /me, which is internally implemented with the "client-to-client protocol." Suppose curl switches to the AGPL, and you curl my web server - am I a "user" that you have to offer source to? Probably! (Maybe I've signed up for pingbacks or some other type of web hook from you. That would definitely make me a user.)

The AGPL "works" for a very small subset of software, namely network applications that render their own interface with download capabilities to a remote human user (so, in practice, web applications, though a BBS could do it with zmodem or something), and it prevents the code in that software from being reused in other types of software. If your web-based forum software has a nice function for email address validation, the Git developers can't use it even though Git is GPL'd and could otherwise move to the AGPL, because sometimes people use git daemon or git http-backend and their users interact with it over the Git CLI.

That last bit, I think, means there is an ethical obligation not to use the AGPL; it introduces a new problem in the field of free software licensing. If you've got some MIT-licensed software and you want to use some GPL'd subroutine I wrote, you can switch to the GPL. If you want to use some AGPL'd subroutine I wrote, you might not be able to. (Or you might be incentivized to turn your software into a webapp!) Historically free software has been a commons, at least in theory, and license incompatibilities have been seen as a bug. The AGPL draws a fairly artificial line between software where the AGPL provisions can be reasonably implemented and where it can't and essentially turns license proliferation into a feature.

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 24, 2023 18:21 UTC (Sat) by fw (subscriber, #26023) [Link]

I think it was a mistake to make the requirement by default, rather than activating it only if the software already has this mechanism. This is how the GPL handles a notice requirement:

d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.

It means that the developer can only exercise this additional restriction after spelling out how, exactly, compliance should look like. This would not eliminate all problems with the AGPL, but it's a big step.

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 25, 2023 3:44 UTC (Sun) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

I agree that the AGPL is a flawed license. Personally, I just stick to permissive licenses, because I'm sick and tired of having to think about license proliferation and compatibility. If somebody else wants to take my software and put it in a proprietary product, then as far as I'm concerned, not my circus, not my monkeys.

I was only bringing up the AGPL to counter the narrative that existing licenses are completely unprepared for a RHEL-like business model. The SaaS loophole has been known about forever, and is far from a new problem.

Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

Posted Jun 26, 2023 12:23 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

As per the reply to that other comment, the AGPL doesn't fix it, because the AGPL applies only where the software has "interactive" remote users. Which is just not true for much (nearly all?) of the software in a Linux distro.