On Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 6:41 PM Todd Zullinger <tmz@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.


Receiving GPL software doesn't give you the right to receive support for it. It never did, and never will. If that you were in capacity to enforce any developer that ever provided you a specific version of a software to give you all future version that you would need in the future, that would contradict fundamental rights: "You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist." [1]

Or said the other way around, the fact that Red Hat gives you a binary, and the sources associated with it doesn't oblige Red Hat to give support for it nor any future modified version of it. This support obligation is only tight to the support contract you may have with Red Hat which it may choose to cancel in any conditions that it sees fit (in accordance to the said contract). The rupture of this contract does not deprive you from your rights on the previously received binaries/sources in any way.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#redistribute
 
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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