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I was wrong

July 2, 2023

...about Red Hat's EULA and its enforceability according to the
license terms of the GPLv2. (Specifically in reference to my blog
post last Wednesday).

And for that, I apologize.

Basically, the GPLv2 says there can be "no restrictions" placed on
any use of the source code provided to any user of the software with
its license.

Red Hat's EULA says that Red Hat reserves the right to terminate your
business relationship (the Red Hat Subscription) if you redistribute
the source code.

This doesn't restrict your right to share the source code that has
been previously provided, since you are still free to do so.

I still agree this isn't a wonderful development. And it does nothing
to affect my view of Red Hat's decisions concerning CentOS and the
subsequent reversal of the promise to deliver cleaned SRPMs to
git.centos.org.

But after discussing it (usually while being a bit impatient, sorry
about that!) with a number of folks in the community (and a couple
corporate open source laywers who were extremely kind to reach out
directly), I am happy to admit I'm smarter today than I was last
week, when it comes to GPLv2 and EULAs.

Nico's comment on my last post, especially, sums up the issue well:

    There can be no license violation because the contract also says
    that any open source license supersedes the terms of the
    agreement. For example the prohibition to share source might not
    apply to AGPL software, because of the requirement to offer
    modified source over the network. So if anything someone whose
    support contract is cancelled could sue and ask for the contract
    to be reinstated according to the GPL. But I am skeptical that it
    would succeed, the lawyers know both copyleft licensing and
    contract law better than you and I.

I previously mentioned that in this entire debacle, there are no
winners.

I was also wrong about that. Somehow, lawyers, they always come out
ahead.

Further reading

  * GPLv2, Red Hat, and You
  * Cracks are showing in Enterprise Open Source's foundations
  * I'm done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)

red hat
eula
open source
licensing
gplv2

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Comments

Jon Forrest - 4 hours ago

Minor typo:

"about Red Hat's EULA and it's enforceability" ->
"about Red Hat's EULA and its enforceability"

  * Reply

Jeff Geerling - 3 hours ago

In reply to Minor typo: "about Red Hat's... by Jon Forrest

Oops! Fixed that.

  * Reply

Christoff Humphries - 3 hours ago

Lawyers always win in the end.

  * Reply

jbowen - 13 min ago

I certainly feel it's against the spirit, but it's in line with the
letter of the GPLv2.

Listening to Mike McGrath talk, I definitely feel like his view of
"open" software is about license compliance and ignores the community
aspect, which in my opinion is the most important.

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