LWN: Comments on "Chef becomes 100% free software"

Chef becomes 100% free software

kpfleming — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 16:45:53 +0000

It is absolutely legal (within the bounds of the relevant copyright licenses) to distribute RHEL binaries.

Doing so may have a negative effect on your ability to obtain support service from Red Hat, though.

Chef becomes 100% free software

robbe — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 12:00:27 +0000

Is this kind of feat even possible using trademark law?

I may not call my own confectionary „Mars“, but I don’t think the Mars family is able to stop me from selling on an original and unaltered „Mars“ bar that I legally acquired.

Chef becomes 100% free software

kiko — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 11:36:44 +0000

Can you redistribute RHEL binaries, and are they available for download from anyone or anywhere?

Chef becomes 100% free software

rfontana — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 14:48:27 +0000

That's not really a RHEL-like model (although certainly at a high level it looks like Chef is moving from open core to a more Red Hat-like model). As with other Red Hat products, RHEL binaries are (with extremely rare package-specific exceptions) distributed under open source/free software licenses. In the Red Hat model, (open source) licensing of binaries is decoupled from the subscription agreement which broadly speaking governs services and does not impose license restrictions on the software.

Chef becomes 100% free software

jond — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 13:12:00 +0000

Open Source is, as the name implies, about the *source*.

Chef becomes 100% free software

TomH — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 10:50:48 +0000

Well I was wondering if they would continue publishing to rubygems or not, because if they do then I think installing with gem is a possible solution for the client at least.

The server is a whole other question as that has a whole ton of dependencies and I'm not sure any of the distros package that - the upstream packaging is a massive bundle that includes builds of apache, nginx, postgres etc...

Chef becomes 100% free software

tcabot — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 10:47:47 +0000

I think that the worst-case scenario here is that the name of the "chef" package in centos or debian will have to change. As long as the code is available under open source terms the distros will continue to be able to package it, they just might have to call it something other than "chef".

It's also available as "chef" from rubygems.org and the name of that package may or may not need to change.

Chef becomes 100% free software

ritterwolf — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 02:22:23 +0000

If there's no open-rebuild version I think I'll have to migrate to something else. I'm going to struggle to convince the Big Boss to pay US$16,500/yr, and I'm not even sure that that will cover all the nodes I want to add to Chef.

It's a shame, I really liked Chef too.

Chef becomes 100% free software

jebba — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 19:11:46 +0000

I guess I just see a headline saying "100% free software", then when I go check it out and there are non-commercial restrictions its disheartening. It seems so often there is some catch. Debian is free software, for example. Chef is doing a blend of free and proprietary.

Chef becomes 100% free software

Wol — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:31:48 +0000

Nit. Welcome to Pick.

Given the mathematical equivalence, if the source is under Apache, then it's open source. Who cares if the binaries CAN be distributed under another licence.

Certainly, if I wrote any Open Source now, I would include a clause that permits binary-only distribution provided it is built - un-modified - from a source tree maintained by a third party.

Keeping track of source is a pain in the neck. Why not out-source that job to upstream? My clause would simply enforce a requirement to share as part of being allowed to distribute binaries.

Cheers,
Wol

Chef becomes 100% free software

servilio-ap — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:15:47 +0000

Have you looked into Nix[1]+NixOps[2]? They have Hydra[3] as CI.

[1] https://nixos.org/nix/
[2] https://nixos.org/nixops/
[3] https://nixos.org/hydra/

Chef becomes 100% free software

jebba — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 15:40:25 +0000

If the binaries are under another license then they are not "open-sourcing of all of its software". They are open sourcing SOME of their software. Binaries are software too.

Chef becomes 100% free software

corbet — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 15:25:24 +0000

The binaries are under their own license, as the Apache license allows. It's an RHEL-like model.

Chef becomes 100% free software

TomH — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 15:18:05 +0000

That seems to be about the gist of it, yes.

The trademark thing presumably means that Ubuntu will have to drop or rename their packaged version, which is quite out of date anyway.

All of which makes it a major pain for open projects that have been using chef to manage their infrastructure - the headline of "chef goes fully open source" looks good but the devil is very much in the details.

Right now as somebody managing approximately 80 servers with chef for OpenStreetMap I'm kind of hoping somebody starts some sort of open rebuild type project...

Chef becomes 100% free software

jebba — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 15:03:55 +0000

> They are talking about their binary distributions.

So if you get the binaries you're free to distribute them under a "100% free software" license as stated in the title? Or is it under another license?

Chef becomes 100% free software

corbet — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 14:58:44 +0000

They are talking about their binary distributions. The source will be under the Apache license.

Chef becomes 100% free software

pabs — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 14:56:49 +0000

Ah, the FAQ makes it clearer, the binaries will require payment for commercial use and the source code will be Apache licensed but redistributions of the source code are not allowed to use the Chef trademarks.

https://www.chef.io/bmc-faq/
https://www.chef.io/trademark-policy/

Chef becomes 100% free software

jebba — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 14:54:16 +0000

"We will make our distributions freely available for non-commercial use". So it sounds like more fake baitware, not free software.

Chef becomes 100% free software

pabs — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 14:47:51 +0000

Hmm, this new "Chef Enterprise Automation Stack" sounds like it will be proprietary.