[arghwhat]

The source code requirements of licenses like GPL is fulfilled if a person who receives a component can request e.g. a tarball of the source used to build the version of the component they had received, in such a state that you can reproduce the component.

Only those whom the component was distributed to can make this demand (although GPL lets this individual distribute the source afterwards), and only for that specific source revision.

[Semaphor]

Yes, I said nothing else.

[arghwhat]

Well, you implied differently and said it was not in the spirit of GPL.

The spirit of GPL is just compliance. It predates all modern source code distribution and collaboration systems and processes - a floppy disk sent by snail mail in response to a letter is likely the original intent.

[geerlingguy]

The spirit of GPL is the free software movement. Not raw compliance.

People who choose to attach GPL licenses to their code are certainly not lawyers and bureaucrats; they intend for a certain level of sharing to occur, else they'd have chosen BSD or MIT license.

[throwaway_9034]

So you think Red Hat's engineering efforts mean nothing because their product is licensed under many open source licenses?

That seems unfair when Rocky/CIQ explicitly uses Red Hat's 10-year support as an advertisement point and contribute nothing to that fair?

https://ciq.com/support/rocky-linux/

    With regular updates and a 10-year committed support lifecycle for each
    major release, Rocky Linux is ideal for use in enterprise environments. It
    is easy to migrate from CentOS and other RHEL-derived Linux distributions, 
    and it is secure and scalable.

Looking at this, what is the cost for CIQ here? What is the cost for Red Hat?

[geerlingguy]

That's a business concern, and it's one of the common issues those who charge for services and platforms on top of GPL-licensed software run into.

[throwaway_9034]

That's actually not true. The whole move is a business concern, that's evident from all the announcements.

Platforms on top of GPL-licensed can promise all they want but still live under the control of the community and that's part of the business many companies like Google, Meta, Obsidian are in.

Selling, and entering into an agreement, the support you don't own based exclusively on the work of another third-party that actually promises that, that's at the very least not right. CIQ/Rocky can't do anything on top of Rocky Linux because of their bug-for-bug compatibility and this decision and message benefits CIQ and not Rocky Linux users. That's also evident.

Rocky Linux could go on using CentOS Stream as an upstream with the help of Red Hat, but CIQ made the business decision to push for a RHEL clone, not the Rocky Linux user community.

You talk about morals, but if you can't see the morals here I don't think you really understand how this whole business works.

[arghwhat]

GPL is nothing but a legal tool, and it's entire purpose is encoded into its decades old verbose wall of text - unless you try to game the license with things like GPL shims, compliance with the text means compliance with the spirit: if the product recipient can get source code access, all is good.

FOSS is not GPL, GPL is not FOSS. Licenses are a very small part of what we consider the modern free software movement.