Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Posted Aug 2, 2023 11:51 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view by ballombe
Parent article: Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
> This is not in the spirit I release software under the GPL.
Perhaps. But that's how GCC was developed and released for years by Cygnus.
So we know that GPL was treated like that for decades, from era before Linux even existed.
> Microsoft EULA stating that if you exercise any of your right under any FLOSS license, you lose your Windows license ?Maybe, but then this approach would need to be tested in court. Because that one is new and it's unclear how court would treat such requirement.
I wouldn't be surprised if court would decide that such an item wouldn't be acceptable in a consumer version of Windows but would be acceptable for corporate license which you don't purchase in a shop but negotiate with Microsoft, instead.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 12:26 UTC (Wed)
by mb (subscriber, #50428)
[Link] (10 responses)
Not really. Windows includes a large amount of GPLed code these days. There's a whole Linux kernel in WSL2.
I'm a bit disappointed that maddog didn't really write about the "further restriction" part that Red Hat tries to apply to the GPL. They restrict the customer from the right to redistribute. They probably can get away with it just because all the pieces are available in public *somewhere*. But it's a punch in my face, as an upstream developer. I released the software such as that anybody (including Red Hat and the end customer) has the written right to redistribute without further restrictions.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 13:31 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (8 responses)
I would be surprised if they did. Google did that that when they were preparing Android in hurry. Microsoft did that AFAIK. True, but it's not coming with Windows. What you get with Windows in virtual machine capable of running Linux, the actual kernel is downloaded from Microsoft Store when you install WSL and comes from other companies.
> I released the software such as that anybody (including Red Hat and the end customer) has the written right to redistribute without further restrictions.
If that was your intent then you should have picked different license. GPLv3 comes close enough, that's why many companies refuse to touch it.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 13:38 UTC (Wed)
by mb (subscriber, #50428)
[Link] (7 responses)
No, why?
> True, but it's not coming with Windows.
That's the same as saying "package xyz does not come with RHEL, because you have to click install".
Posted Aug 2, 2023 13:52 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (6 responses)
No. It's not important where package comes from. But it's important who exercises the right to create copies. And that, fundamental, question is different when we are discussing RHEL and WSL2. Sure, but it could. It's not bound by GPL because it never makes new copies. Canonical or Debian Project are making them, not Microsoft. If anything it's easier for the Microsoft to add such clause. It doesn't make business sense thus it's not used, but Microsoft can add it easily.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 14:00 UTC (Wed)
by mb (subscriber, #50428)
[Link] (5 responses)
Wrong.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 14:10 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (4 responses)
Sorry, but where are the binaries? WSL installer doesn't download these sources and doesn't build them, you know (while old Solaris and OS/360 installers did that, WSL doesn't). WSL uses prebuilt binaries. And these don't come from Microsoft. You may try to bring contracts between Microsoft, Canonical and EULA to the court and try to prove that Microsoft actually facilitates creation of these binaries that Canonical produces, but that would very-very complicated case with very-very unclear outcome (well one part of the outcome is clear: lawyers would become quite rich arguing for both sides… but anything else is very unclear).
Posted Aug 2, 2023 18:00 UTC (Wed)
by dezgeg (subscriber, #92243)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 2, 2023 18:09 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Looks like you are right. Microsoft is providing Linux binaries novadays. Haven't realized that. Indeed that changes things and the fact that they are also providing source (and even promise to send sources if you send them US $5.00… nice touch) means they have to comply with GPL… which they are actually doing. Wonder what made them change gears, they tried to avoid distributing anything GPL for years.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 20:00 UTC (Wed)
by bluca (subscriber, #118303)
[Link]
Posted Aug 3, 2023 21:03 UTC (Thu)
by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
[Link]
Money. They could see the big revenue growth was going to come from cloud computing, and a lot of potential customers thought "cloud" meant Linux. More generally, Microsoft's desire to avoid distributing anything GPL was more about trying to FUD the concept of FOSS than any real legal difficulty. Once it was obvious the FUD hadn't worked and there was real money to be made in the FOSS space, their reluctance went away.
Posted Nov 1, 2023 4:56 UTC (Wed)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link]
+1
Posted Aug 2, 2023 12:26 UTC (Wed)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link] (10 responses)
The cygnus situation was quite different. It did not include the blackmail part.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 13:44 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (6 responses)
Link to CygWin 1.0 ISO (or “compatible rebuild”) would help prove your point. Preferably one which was usable back when CygWin 1.0 was current. Most people were happy using CygWin B20.1 for years after CygWin 1.0 release. And I don't remember any companies which would promise to give you some version of GCC which wasn't available publicly for free. Cygwin had no need to do what RedHat is doing because people were accepting what they were given. Situation with RHEL is different WRT to rules enforcement on both sides: there are lots of freeloaders (and no, these not people who are building RHEL forks) and thus there are need to enforce rules. But rules themselves are absolutely the same WRT CygWin and RHEL.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 17:46 UTC (Wed)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link] (5 responses)
Link to an actual blackmail clause in a cygwin support contract would help prove your point.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 17:58 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (4 responses)
It doesn't matter why they haven't done that. The important thing is that they were asked to refrain from doing that and they kept that version to themselves. Why would there be such a clause if there were no violators? RHEL also got it not on the day one, but only after some people started building their business around bug-for-bug compatible clones.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 18:02 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
No, RHEL has had this clause since day one... over two decades ago.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 22:02 UTC (Wed)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link] (2 responses)
But if there were no such clause, this is not a valid legal precedent, contrary to what you claim.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 22:29 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
It's not that CD-ROM haven't included any retaliation clauses. It was commercial product and, as such, included proprietary installer and some proprietary programs. And if you copied that you were obvious copyright violator, plain and simple. It haven't included retaliation clause for the case where you may copy only free software from it, but without installer it wasn't much useful. IOW: it haven't needed any retaliation clauses because it just made the whole story with attempts to achieve bug-for-bug compatibility impossible. Whether court would consider that “the same thing” as what RedHat is doing now is open question, but practically it was much easier and simpler way to achieve what RedHat is trying to achieve. And then RedHat bought them and tried to eat their cake and have it too (pretend that they don't sell proprietary software and yet, someone, stop RHEL freeloaders).
Posted Aug 3, 2023 9:50 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
YaST forbade distribution for money. It was easy (and perfectly okay) to copy a SuSE CD. You could give them away, you just couldn't sell them ...
Cheers,
Posted Aug 2, 2023 14:05 UTC (Wed)
by kiko (subscriber, #69905)
[Link] (2 responses)
"Approximately one year after a version of Ghostscript is made available under the Aladdin Free Public License and its commercial licenses, Artifex Software re-releases that version under the GPL, at which point the software becomes truly open source."
For clarity a dual-license model is different to what RHAT is doing (using a separate agreement that is additive to the GPLv2).
Posted Aug 2, 2023 14:24 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
They couldn't do that. RMS write GCC initially and Cygnus had no rights to relicense it. But their paying customers were hardware manufacturers who paid for the compiler for their CPUs. Cygnus would provide them with sources and binaries but it only included sources for these CPUs and not the whole thing. Free GCC was receiving all the patches but it was never available in binary form for most exotic chips, you had to get these from hardware maker. And it took a loooooong time for some patches to arrive in trunk. And most of the time these were only coming in binary form, but that wasn't Cygnus problem. And it took a loooooong time for some patches to arrive in GCC's trunk, so you couldn't pull CentOS on them and just build GCC from sources. The closest analogue to what RedHat is doing happened with CygWin: CygWin betas are freely available while releases are only available on CD. Reminds you something? Of course the fact that CygWin only ever released one proprietary version on CD, version 1.0, weakens the point, but that's just because there were too few buyers, even after it become apparent that most users are happy with free betas CygWin 1.0 ISO haven't arrived on any popular web sites and there were no clones. And the most important fact is that it all was critical for success of GNU: it's unclear if we would even got
Posted Aug 4, 2023 5:27 UTC (Fri)
by bconoboy (guest, #80928)
[Link]
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Terminating the OS EULA if I redistribute the WSL2 kernel is almost exactly what Red Hat does.
> Windows includes a large amount of GPLed code these days.
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Ok, then. If that is your definition, then Windows probably doesn't come with GPLed code.
The argument still applies, though. Microsoft doesn't terminate EULAs or refuse to make future license agreements with you, if you exercise your GPL rights.
> That's the same as saying "package xyz does not come with RHEL, because you have to click install".
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Wonder what made them change gears, they tried to avoid distributing anything GPL for years.
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
> The cygnus situation was quite different.
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Irrelevant. Companies might have chosen not to redistribute the source for their own reason, without needing to be coerced, for example because doing so was not straightforward at the time and would only have helped their competitors.
> Companies might have chosen not to redistribute the source for their own reason, without needing to be coerced, for example because doing so was not straightforward at the time and would only have helped their competitors.
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Wol
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
https://rosenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/Shared-Source-Eve...
> Remind me how it worked — did they provide software under a different license to paying customers and later GPLv2 the same codebase?
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
i386 compiler without all that activity. And without i386 GCC compiler there would have been no Linux, obviously.Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view