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Open source developers - have the recent moves by RedHat changed your opinion of using non-GPL licenses? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by xylan@kbin.social to c/linux@kbin.social

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The new license terms for RHEL are structured to stop subscribers from exercising their rights under the GPL. For now they are still providing source code albeit in a less convenient form, but technically they only need to do this for GPL licenses packages and they could remove code for BSD /MIT / Apache licensed packages.

Do these developments make you more.inclined to distribute your software under a copyleft license or are you happy with something more open?

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[–] xylan@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The legal loophole RedHat found I'm guessing is something that might trigger GPLv4 to stop this behaviour (effectively punishing someone for exercising their GPL rights).

You're right that most use of OSS doesn't involve modification so it doesn't really matter, but packaging changes are still useful.

I know Stallman was the strongest advocate of the GPL but personally I like the principle of reciprocity which it enshrines. For all of their contributions it's important to realise that companies like RedHat are very much building on the work of OSS developers.

[–] staticlifetime@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Well, considering Linux is using GPLv2, I think it'd be too late for it to help Linux, which is kind of a big deal I guess.