| The issue isn't about them refusing to give sources to their customers. It's around placing restrictions on their ability to exercise their rights with those sources under the GPL. > You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. You cannot argue that ending their business relationship as a direct consequence of distributing those sources wasn't a restriction on the user's rights. They can play coy all they want, but nobody's going to believe these two events are unrelated. Their EULA is effectively a set of "additional permissions" as defined in GPL section 7, > All other non-permissive additional terms are considered “further restrictions” within the meaning of section 10 [and therefore invalid]. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. To the extent that interpretation is required, courts are going to try and divine the author/copyright-holder's intent. And the GPL goes to great lengths (even including a lengthy preamble) to spell out that is intent is specifically to enhance freedom and ensure unrestricted access and exercise of rights by users. Analyses that Red Hat's UELA is not a GPL violation are wrong, both in the moral intent of the license and the literal wording. They are mostly coming from a place of "well tekknukkally" that split hairs over literal wording and semantics, and that's not how the law works. It's up to players like Alma, Rocky and others to battle it out in court. |