I agree with RH's decision.
I write software and release it as gpl3, source, it and all build Makefiles! I give it
out, and to those, I ask, only to provide me with bug reports or some patch ideas to make
the offering better.
What should I do, if the person I gave the software to, removes my copyright, rebrands the
software and sells my software as their own? Is it right? And when I release a bug fix,
they take it, insert the fix into the rebranded copy they are selling, and they quietly
say, "Screw You, Leslie".
Suppose I was the government, and I did that same offer to end-users. Would the
redistribution be legit, and even honest, if from the government, and it was for
remuneration?
The right-or-wrong activity is really a discussion about ownership and rules for sharing.
In the Leslie case, Leslie is the owner. In the government case, the people are the
owners.
What right does a company have the right to clone and rebrand my product and resell it?
Under the gpl3, they have an unenforceable obligation to provide me with bug reports. They
do not have a moral right to redistribute my software as their own, and for remuneration.
In two cases, at least two companies offer Linux as known Red Hat, clones. We understand
that they copy the sources, the bug fixes, and rebrand the software as their own. In most
cases, vanilla in -- vanilla out. But it is not revenue in, revenue shared.
What should Red Hat do to recover the costs for development of new features,
documentation, distribution, bug-fixes, 24/7 support as well, the infrastructure that
allowed an individual to freely download the entire package. The clones have none of those
obligations or costs? Red Hat is financing Centos and Fedora. Moreover,
visit
https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/
to get a small idea of the investment, operating costs, and end-user benefits. Recall, Red
Hat shareholders are not a government body.
Perhaps it is time to provide a gpl4 rule that encompasses or replaces gpl3.
Leslie Satenstein
On Thursday, June 29, 2023 at 12:41:44 p.m. EDT, Todd Zullinger <tmz(a)pobox.com>
wrote:
Carlos O'Donell wrote:
On 6/26/23 18:47, Jeff Law wrote:
> What Red Hat has done may be technically legal and perhaps good for
> its business. However, to me it's ethically unconscionable. Those
> who know me know I'm not an zealot, but I do have a baseline set of
> ethical values and Red Hat crossed that line.
Why is it ethically unconscionable? There is a lot of confusion around
what has happened and why. What you are saying, and what actually happened
don't line up in my mind :-)
Something I'm having trouble with is Red Hat's position that
you can choose to be a customer or to exercise your rights
under the GPL, but you cannot be both.
I don't know how to view that as anything other than
sacrificing the spirit of F/OSS to help the books.
I am sympathetic to the odd/difficult nature of running a
business based on F/OSS. Until now I thought Red Hat was
doing it pretty well.
I thought Jeff's message was well written. I am still
struggling with whether I should take the same path. :(
--
Todd
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