RHEL no longer open source

Jesus christ. They aren't going closed source. It's like all these people are new to Linux and don't understand the GPL, nor the politics behind the license.

That’s not how I understood it. I think saying “closed source” is kind of misleading.

Incorrect, redhat are simply saying that to get any source you have to have a centos stream subscription, which would be correct as if you have centos stream binaries you need a subscription anyway, so basically you only get the centos stream source on request if you actually happened to be a centos stream customer.

Now, what happens to centos stream users who used to be subscribing, well they should still be able to get the source for a reasonable fee (to cover distribution costs) for the binary code they have to hand. That means that if they are on an old centos and they want the source for project X version 2.3, and project X v2.3 is under a copyleft license, legally RedHat have a requirement to provide it upon request, but they have no legal requirements to provide source for a version that is from a later version of centos if the customer doesn't actually have the binaries.

So if they can somehow keep future binary versions of centos code out of the hands of non-paying users they don't have to give source to versions they don't have. I don't think they can do that easily.

This is only for copyleft code. This only applies to code they applied (note I didn't say contributed) to copyleft code. Thus if they modified GNU Grep, their modifications are under the GPL, thus the code must be provided to anyone who asks for it if they have the binary. But if it is code unique to centos or applied to a project that isn't under a copyleft licence, or is a project under a copyleft licence that allows non-copyleft modules or linking etc, they don't have to give any of that.

The GPL is pretty simple, I used to read V2 as a kid in the 90's and saw it like a Bible lol. V3 is more thorough and not as nice a read but it's still very clear. However, not all software in a Linux distribution is protected by a copyleft licence like the GPL, this is the line that separates Free Software from Open Source. Welcome to the big problem of Open Source. You all want source code? Well Free Software gives you the rights for it and uses copyright law to protect those rights. But Open Source came about because that idea was incompatible with business who wanted the opposite. So you should expect Redhat to honour their legal obligations under the GPL but you won't get a source version of centos as not everything in centos is GPL, some will be MIT, or Apache or BSD, and they are not copyleft licences and they give you no right to the source code at all.

Seems to me that a lot of people need to brush up on their Free Software, Richard Stallman, FSF, GNU, Open Source history. Free Software is Open Source as defined by the OSI (you don't know who they are? Brush up like I said) but much that is Open Source is not Free Software and even more is not copyleft.

If you think that copyleft ideology applies to anything considered as "Open Source", well you don't have a clue what anything is actually about and you need to do some reading and listening of some Richard Stallman speeches because this confusion is precisely what he and the FSF have been combatting for years only to get barely anywhere because of how marketable "Open Source" is.

So again remember, not all of centos is copyleft. What is copylefted is protected but you won't get a buildable source version of Centos unless you are a subscriber as many of its parts are not legally available to you, you can get all the GPL copyleft code and centos specific modifications, but a working OS you won't get.

Decent breakdown from The Register:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/

Seems they have been quite focused on the embrace, extend, extinguish plan for a decade or so.

I see so many confused here. Unsurprising considering so many have no idea what the GPL is, what Free Software is, why it's different, very different from "Open Source" software due to copyleft.

Everyone should go read the GPL, read version 2 as it reads very well, version 3 just beefs up version 2 to handle certain situations but its a bit less of a nicer read.

Learn what Free Software is: https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software

And listen to a few of Richard Stallmans speeches which he has to continue giving because of this "Open Source" thing that confused everything. Note that the FSF, Richard Stallman and the GPL have nothing to do with Open Source at all. It is the Open Source Initiative that accepts the GPL as a "Open Source" license but not all Open SOurce licenses are Free Software licenses.

Below is a link to the Software Freedom Conservancy who have been talking to Redhat / IBM for years about this very issue before RH/IBM turned tail and stabbed everyone in the back:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

Redhat dont have a legal leg to stand on however it will cost you to prove it. You should win, but it will cost you. I am happy to purge any RH software from my systems at work, I was doing that anyway due to what happened to Centos.

Redhat have become the new SCO in essence.

They would have to rewrite most software if they wanted to make it closed source, otherwise they would be violating licenses

Interesting move. The vast majority of VFX studios use (or used) CentOS, Rocky and Red Hat. In fact it's been recommended in the industry to adopt Rocky by 2024

As others have said, RHEL is not going closed source. They are not violating the letter of the GPL (though IMO, certainly the spirit of it).

I think this is a crappy move by RedHat/IBM and I won't excuse it, but I will say in their defense they are one of the largest contributors to open source. Everything from the kernel to Gnome and in between. It's a massive step back from the company they were 5 years ago, though.

RHEL is not the "villain distro", that's ChromeOS (and possibly CBL-Mariner).

Jokes aside, if they want their source code to only be available to people who pay for it, that's their decision. I don't know if there is any benefit to creating a Linux distro based on RHEL VS. another Linux distro that's still open source but if there is, then I'm pretty sure that the developer is more than willing to pay if they think it's worth it.

The privatization is spreading everywhere. Internet this days feels like the Far West after the end of the frontier expansion. Everything is "getting fenced" and tons of "small cities" are slowly dying out.

How will it be closed source, per GPL? Are they bundling in proprietary services that are required to make it run?

Well if they do go on to paywall it completely then yes my ditaste for RHEL will grow deeper than even Ubuntu

Does this affect Fedora?

It's a pity Almalinux was my go-to distro for VMs and whatnot. However, I was recently compelled to use Debian for a provisioning done with Ansible. It was a positive experience, of course one has to deal with the joy of Debian's versions and packages discrepancies, but hey-ho we crack on. Also, I've been hearing good things about Suse, does anyone care to share a story?

What are the implications of this move on fedora? I've been thinking of moving to fedora but I'm not so sure now