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Last month I used this space to talk about IBM/Red Hat's plan to restrict access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code. This eerie announcement, which seemed quite contrary to the ideals of free software, sent shock waves through the community.
Dear Reader,
Last month I used this space to talk about IBM/Red Hat's plan to restrict access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code. This eerie announcement, which seemed quite contrary to the ideals of free software, sent shock waves through the community. Some said it violated the spirit of the GPL, and others argued it was necessary to stop the clones from stealing Red Hat's business. Everyone agreed that Red Hat had developed a novel argument that could potentially allow them to skirt around the code-sharing protections of the GPL, and the general feeling was that the matter would only be settled after a protracted courtroom battle.
Regardless of where this episode ends legally, it is now clear that Red Hat's clones and other competitors are not planning to wait for the courts. Various distros have come up with various plans, some of which I covered last month. This month, the big news is that Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ have joined forces to launch the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA).
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