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

RH's subscription terms have been essentially unchanged for over twenty years, going all the way back to the RHEL 2 release in 2002, a full five years before the GPLv3 was released. Furthermore, this approach is the same as what Cygnus did with GCC (ie an actual GNU project!) starting in 1989, about two years before the GPLv2 was released!

If anything, the FSF has _strengthened_ the language permitting what Red Hat is doing -- They make it clear that GPL rights only apply to the specific release the user has in their hands and there is no guarantee of support or any future updates [1]. Additionally, it explicitly states that support and future updates can be withdrawn if the user exercises their rights to source and "installation instructions" under the GPL.

So I have a very hard time seeing how the FSF could address what RH is doing without also effectively requiring everyone to provide a warranty (and thus updates/support) for free. Which simply isn't going to happen.

[1] although support/updates may be provided for a fee [2]
[2] which necessitates an additional agreement/contract stating what limits/terms of support, the actual fees, and so forth.