Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

Posted Aug 3, 2023 18:24 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view by mb
Parent article: Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

How is it in exchange? You do not lose your GPL rights by taking up RH's support contract; you retain them, even if you later lose your RH support contract for breaching the terms of that contract.

Further, exercising your GPL rights does not automatically terminate your RH support contract; the specific clause for termination involves you using your support contract to give a third party the benefit of an RH subscription. Thus, you can distribute code using your GPL rights without losing your RH support subscription. If it was an exchange, you would not be able to do that at all - and yet you can, as long as (in RH's view) you're not giving a third party the benefits of your support subscription.