License Matters

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Article from Issue 274/2023
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Things have been pretty quiet in Free Software for a few years now. When I started this job, Linux and the little mystery ship we call Open Source were fighting for survival.

Dear Reader,

Things have been pretty quiet in Free Software for a few years now. When I started this job, Linux and the little mystery ship we call Open Source were fighting for survival. Microsoft, SCO, and other large companies were bringing all their powers to break up that delicate balance of code freedom established by the GNU Public License (GPL). Much of the battle was fought through PR stunts and misinformation, but some of it was fought in courtrooms – and the GPL always won.

But things could be heating up again. Red Hat recently announced that only paying customers will have access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code, and apparently, if the customer tries to exercise the rights to that code as defined in the GPL, Red Hat will terminate the customer agreement. This Kafkaesque bit of legal juggling seems like a blast from the combative past. Only this time, the lawyers have had 15 additional years to perfect their skills at surgical hair splitting.

[...]

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