[kijin]

The RHEL sources aren't freely available. They are only provided to RHEL customers. Red Hat strongly discourages said customers from leaking the sources to Rocky, so Rocky won't say anything that might reveal where they got the sources. [1]

The GPL only requires that you provide sources to those to whom you distribute binaries, not to the general public.

[1] Red Hat can probably figure it out anyway. For example, they could slightly alter the sources and/or assets provided to each customer in a way that doesn't affect the functionality, and see which version turns up in Rocky's repository. But the leaky customer might too big for Red Hat to punish. Government maybe.

[jerven]

Just want to note that there is a lot of non GPL software in RHEL. e.g. Apache licensed or MIT. For which they do not have an obligation to provide the sources.

[rthnbgrredf]

I already pointed that out multiple times to Rocky Linux staff. They have no answer to this. The whole concept of Rocky is a big bet, that Red Hat won't pull the sources of non-GPL binaries e.g. in cloud instances and other public accessable places, where Rocky is currently fetching their sources from.

If you choose not to participate in this gamble, then this distro may not be suitable for you.

[nuker]

> The GPL only requires that you provide sources to those to whom you distribute binaries, not to the general public.

Interesting. I looked at Wikipedia GPL page and saw this: "The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses or copyleft that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software.[7] "

So any user of GPL covered software can share it with anyone. Right? Can any RHEL user share sources to Rocky? And to public?

[gulikoza]

That's where the disagreement is. Yes, it can be shared but RedHat under their license is not bound to provide you with any further updates.

However, this makes it as if you are being punished for exercising the rights that have been given to you by the original software license.

[zokier]

I think this is an interesting question in general because GPL has also this clause

> You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein

So I think it could be debatable if RHELs policy represents a restriction. Overall I feel this part of GPL has not been explored all that thoroughly and I feel it raises questions beyond this RHEL case. For example FSFs GPL FAQ states:

> For instance, you can accept a contract to develop changes and agree not to release your changes until the client says ok. This is permitted because in this case no GPL-covered code is being distributed under an NDA

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DevelopChangesU...

I don't understand how that is not conflicting here; wouldn't your client be distributing the code to be modified to you, and that should be covered by GPL? And as such the NDA would represent additional restriction?

I suppose there could be a special case where the client would ask modifications for a publicly available sources and as such would not be distributing the code themselves, but I feel that can not be considered typical or general case.

Similar interesting case would be employees receiving copies of company internal forks of GPL code. Should employees have right to redistribute the code in accordance to GPL terms without threat of getting punished?

[kijin]

AFAIK mere exchange of code between employer and employee is not considered "distribution" for the purpose of the GPL. They are part of the same company, working on the same project. Similar relationships exist between client and contractor, client and lawyer, etc.

[zokier]

It is about as clear as mud.

> The function of the contractor in such cases is nearly identical to that of an employee; however, because the contractor is not an employee, providing a copy of software to the contractor could be considered distribution. This is one of the thornier areas of GPLv2 interpretation, and it is discussed in more detail below

> A full discussion of the tenets of international copyright law bearing upon this issue is beyond the scope of this article, but it seems likely the question would have different answers outside the U.S [...] Therefore, the triggers for copyleft obligations, based on activity outside the U.S., may have a lower threshold than in the U.S.

https://www.jolts.world/index.php/jolts/article/view/66/125

[nuker]

> you are being punished for exercising the rights that have been given to you by the original software license

This means war. Rebel!

[kijin]

They can, and they do, so the community eventually gets the sources. But Red Hat has every right to terminate their paid support contract with any customer who shares.

[bclemens]

There's no mystery or secret about where we get sources: https://rockylinux.org/news/keeping-open-source-open/

TLDR: UBIs and cloud instances.