[BozemanGLUG] maddog sounds off on the RHEL situation

[Joshua J. Cogliati]

I did finish reading Maddog's article. I think Redhat has done a lot for 
Linux. I agree that figuring out how to get software made is a problem.

Joshua Cogliati

On 8/2/23 06:20, Joshua J. Cogliati wrote:
> Hm, to the extent that this is actual Redhat policy (as opposed to 
> what the Redhat marketing department is implying), then your freedom 
> is rather limited. On the other hand, I have not read anything that 
> really convinces me that Redhat is currently dropping customers who 
> redistribute RHEL GNU GPL code.  This reminds me of an old joke (ha, 
> ha, its only true):
>
> Q:      How does the Polish Constitution differ from the American?
> A:      Under the Polish Constitution citizens are guaranteed freedom of
>         speech, but under the United States constitution they are
>         guaranteed freedom after speech.
>                 -- being told in Poland, 1987
>
> I do completely agree that it is hard making money off of GNU GPL 
> software.
>
> Joshua Cogliati
>
> P.S. If I recall correctly, the Redhat marketing department spent a 
> lot of time when Fedora first arrived saying that Fedora would eat 
> your brains, or something like that.  (Maybe that is my problem, my 
> brains have been eaten by using Fedora...)
>
> On 8/1/23 21:06, Scott Dowdle wrote:
>> As a Red Hat customer, you can redistribute and modify and 
>> redistribute all you want.  You just might end up losing your Red Hat 
>> subscription.  If that were to happen, you can still keep the source 
>> and redistribute it all you want.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>
>>> It is interesting, and I will try and read the full thing at
>>> somepoint, but after reading the "tying it all together" section and
>>> skimming the rest, it (like several other commentaries I have seen
>>> on RHEL) seem to be missing much thought about freedom 2 and 3 of
>>> the FSF four freedoms (see for example
>>> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms ) which
>>> I quote here:
>>>
>>>
>>>      * The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose
>>>      (freedom 0).
>>>      * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it
>>>      does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the
>>>      source code is a precondition for this.
>>>      * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others
>>>      (freedom 2).
>>>      * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to
>>>      others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole
>>>      community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the
>>>      source code is a precondition for this.
>>>
>>>
>>> Basically, if the people who receive the software can't redistribute
>>> it, then they are missing freedom 2.
>>>
>>>  From Maddog's article: " Therefore the people who receive those
>>> binaries would receive the sources so they could fix bugs and extend
>>> the operating system as they wished…..this was, and is, the essence
>>> of the GPL ."
>>>
>>> Um, this is only freedom 1, so this is missing the essence of the GNU
>>> GPL.
>>>
>>>
>>> Joshua Cogliati
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 8/1/23 12:56, Scott Dowdle wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> It's quite the read:
>>> https://www.lpi.org/blog/2023/07/30/ibm-red-hat-and-free-software-an-old-maddogs-view/ 
>>>
>>> I don't think he really articulated the "BSD Unix" thing completely
>>> accurately but other than that, I agree totally.
>>>
>>> TYL,
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