I’m curious about what you think on how it will affect the Linux community and distros (especially RHEL based distros like Fedora or Rocky).

  • nkey
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • priapus@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I doubt it would legal to make that against the terms. It GPL code, Oracle is allowed to access it as they please.

      • nkey
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • priapus@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          If the code they’re adding isn’t protected by GPL they no have obligation to release it at all, and with these changes they probably won’t.

      • exu@feditown.com
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        1 year ago

        They could still revoke access. The subscription probably says something like “we can revoke access for any reason”. Most subscriptions do

        • priapus@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          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.