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 26, 2023 10:53 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model by Karellen
Parent article: Kuhn: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model

The spec files in the SRPMs for RHEL are source code, and are all written by Red Hat. If you're requiring RH to ship the specfiles for the binaries they ship to a third party (not their customers), then you're requiring them to ship code they wrote themselves under terms they don't like.

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

Posted Jun 26, 2023 14:13 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

The GPL code they ship requires "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable" (GPLv2) to be distributed as part of the source code of the work under the GPL.

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

Posted Jun 26, 2023 14:20 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Sure, but I was responding to the idea that "[no]one is claiming RedHat should not be able to distribute any code they wrote themselves under any terms they like". They are very definitely restricted in the terms they can use to distribute code they wrote themselves, as part of the GPL's mechanism for building a software commons.