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 17:46 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)In reply to: Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view by khim
Parent article: 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.
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,
> 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