141
Thoughts on RHEL going closed source ?
(mander.xyz)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
This was my initial thought as well, but I imagine that would violate the terms of their subscription and Red Hat could just revoke their access going forward.
I doubt it would legal to make that against the terms. It GPL code, Oracle is allowed to access it as they please.
Very true for the GPL code, but Red Hat adds code that isn’t GPL to the distro. So your downstream distros would have to cherry pick that code out.
They could still revoke access. The subscription probably says something like "we can revoke access for any reason". Most subscriptions do
True, but what's stopping someone from uploading it anonymously? They have to share the code with customers, but that doesn't mean GPL doesn't apply to non-customers. Anyone working at these companies can download the source code and upload it online.