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 12:51 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)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
The RedHat blackmail prevent the licensee from exercising that right.
No, it doesn't. Given a GPL'ed software package XYZ that you receive from Red Hat as part of your paid subscription to RHEL, Red Hat won't have a problem with your distributing XYZ to other people under the GPL. Why would they? What Red Hat doesn't want is your distributing all of RHEL to other people, on an ongoing basis, so that these people can effectively have RHEL without having to pay Red Hat. If you do that, Red Hat may decline to provide you with further updates to RHEL, but that does not impact in any way your GPL rights with respect to the XYZ package that you already have.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 13:34 UTC (Wed)
by mb (subscriber, #50428)
[Link] (3 responses)
I (and probably everybody else) do understand why Red Hat *wants* to do that. That's not the problem here.
But it is fully against the idea behind the GPL and it is actually dancing on the edge of illegal further restrictions. But they are probably dancing on the legal side of the edge.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 14:02 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Yes. And RMS was incensed when Cygnus did that dance, too. But he haven't stopped it. If he did GNU would have been DOA and, most likely, Linux would have never materialized. It would have been different world, most likely dominated by BSD descendants and BSD licenses. Then discussion we have today would be just inconceivable for obvious reasons. Yup. But they are doing things which were needed to make GNU (and thus Linux as it was started as “kernel for GNU” and Linus was talking about that quite explicitly) viable. This forms a plenty powerful estoppel: one couldn't say that what Cygnus was doing back then was fine and dandy when GNU was tiny and weak and now, today, turn around and say that you changed your mind.
Posted Aug 2, 2023 18:01 UTC (Wed)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 3, 2023 7:49 UTC (Thu)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link]
That's not how any of this works. Estoppel is an equitable right that attaches under a wide variety of circumstances. I am skeptical that it attaches under *these* circumstances in particular (at a minimum, you would need to produce a written record of the FSF and/or GNU explicitly and unambiguously endorsing a particular interpretation of the GPL, and even then it would likely only bind those parties and not e.g. Linus), but to assert that it never applies to copyright at all goes way too far. For example, a promissory estoppel might be styled as an "implied verbal license" or something like that, but the effect is the same: The plaintiff loses their case.
Tortious interference, on the other hand, is a matter of contract law. Since most copyright licenses are contracts, including the GPL in most jurisdictions,[1] it follows that tortious interference with a copyright license is possible, but again, I'm not seeing how it applies here. Vaguetweeting about how you don't like Red Hat's interpretation of the GPL can hardly rise to the level of tortious interference. At a minimum, you'd have to explicitly solicit RH's customers to breach their support agreements, and I am not aware of the FSF (or anyone else) actually doing that.
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
> But it is fully against the idea behind the GPL and it is actually dancing on the edge of illegal further restrictions.
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Or you can call that tortious interference since there are no estoppel in copyright law...
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view