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by pipo234 1093 days ago
Would it be possible to:

1. create a free dev account

2. get the sources

3. merge changes into rocky repo

4. have the account terminated by the Hat

5. goto 1?

Subversive, but mostly in compliance with GPL and Red Hat EULA... Ish. Kinda.

But I probably made an error here. Who can point it out?

3 comments

4. Have the user terminated by IBM lawyers.
without sufficient caffeine or context, this line reads like a cyberpunk plot.
William Gibson! Lawyers are also execution branch in any corporate vassalage area. They carry the Licence, pocket Bible and FN Five-seven.
How does RedHat know said user is the one who distributed the changes? If the changes are given to Team Rocky on CD via USPS, there would be know way to know which RedHat user is the one giving changes to Rocky.
Red Hat wouldn't even care to identify the user: Rocky Linux, the Rocky Enterprise Linux Foundation, CIQ, etc would be brought to trial for accepting those sources.
Possible sure. Also illegal and would get the company shut down.
I'm not sure if this is illegal.

The developer (john doe) honours the EULA up to the point where the sources are on his computer and cancels hist account (or has RedHat do that). From there, it's just GPL code that can be re-destributed freely (save for RedHat trademarks and licensed assets).

The company (rocky, alma, springdale, oracle) is in it's full right to accept any changes and merge them into their GPL code base.

Sure the ethics are questionable, but I suppose the IBM lawyers would have a hard time prohibiting this in the EULA while simultaneously honouring GPL and welcoming contributions from anonymous developers.

But I suppose I'm just too dumb to see that my cunning plan isn't very cunning at all. :-)

> IBM lawyers would have a hard time

Never underestimate your enemy. (c) Sun Tzu, The Art of War