[jonhohle]

It sound like RedHat has migrated back to a “purchase” model then. You pay once, get your software and do with it as you please and then they ask you kindly to not pay again, kind of like the old days. Sounds good to me.

As long as one subscriber is willing to leave their contract per release, downstream derivatives should have no end of supply for each release. This may not help with patches, but many of those would come from third parties to begin with.

[zugi]

This is the answer. What RedHat is doing is legal but sneaky. So we can be legal but sneaky too.

Start a consortium that creates a new LLC or non-profit organization with no ties back to the consortium. That new organization buys a license, and publishes the code until RedHat cuts them off. Start a new one and repeat.

Of course it could become a cat and mouse game, where RedHat starts denying customers it deems suspicious. They start demanding more info of their customers. But all that could be bad for business...

[smsm42]

Not a lawyer, but I suspect doing this with prior intent would be fraud (since you enter the contract with intent to violate it) and probably get you sued.

[zugi]

I don't think so, the whole point here is that the contract does not - and cannot - bar you from sharing the code. The GPL bars RedHat from imposing additional restrictions on your rights to the code.

But RedHat is under no obligation to make future sales to you and can drop you as a customer for any reason, including you exercising your legal right to share the code.

So they want to be legal but sneaky? Let the legal but sneaky games begin!

[smsm42]

Even easier - let's say I send you a bunch of GPL code and tell you I'll pay you 1000 dollars if you never send it to anybody else. Easy money right? If you still send the code, I can't sue you for license violation - GPL allows you to do that. But you certainly took $1000 and didn't do what I paid you for. It's not just legal but sneaky, it's a violation of our contract, despite the fact the license is not violated - two different things.

[smsm42]

The contract can not remove your legal rights, but can ask you to give them up in exchange for something. For example, I can not prohibit you from driving you own car, but if I rent it from you, and later you just take it back while my rental term still in effect, it would be a breach of contract, despite the car being legally yours. And if I learn that you never intended to let me drive the car, but still pretended to rent if out, then if would be fraud. Same, my employer can not prevent me from exercising my right you free speech, but some of it - eg disclosing trade secrets - may get me fired and sued for damages. Because by signing employment contract I agreed to give up exercise of some rights - like use if my time and some of my speech - in exchange for the salary. If I didn't I could speak of any secrets and they couldn't do a thing.

Contract is a meeting of minds honestly intending to perform. If you did not have the good faith intention to perform the contract, it's not just sneaky, it's fraudulent.

[theonemind]

If I understood what you mean, it doesn't sound like it works in any practical sense, because Red Hat wouldn't take you as a customer for release n + 1.

1. You purchase release N

2. You distribute the source code to release N.

3. Red Hat terminates you.

4. You needed Red Hat N. You're doing enterprisey things or using software that runs on Red Hat.

5. Red Hat releases N + 1.

6. You try to get release N + 1 from Red Hat, because you're in the ecosystem, doing enterprisey things, using software that runs on Red Hat

7. Red Hat remembers what you did on release N and doesn't offer you release N + 1.

It doesn't quite seem like the purchase model. This barely seems to get you anything over what a Rocky or Alma or whatever scrape to put together with Red Hat damming distribution, so you might as well resort to them right at release N instead of paying Red Hat for it.