I see a lot of people angry about redhat’s decisions of not wanting to redistribute source code to others but I think that should be completely within their rights. The way I see it is like I am a developer of let’s say a music player. I make my source code public because I want people to see what they’re downloading and may be get advice what I can change to make it better. I charge $10 for my app. And then someone else downloads my code, compiles it and redistributes it in his name with few changes. Then why would people want to use my app when they get same app for free? I think then, it’s completely within my right to make it closed source in that case as that’s what I make money from. Sure, my app is based on a free and open source framework but then there’s also such a thing as consent
They consented their framework to be used for development. I don’t consent my app to be redistributed. Why is it an issue?
My personal take is that this is not a about code, or licensing, and certainly not about money made from direct sales.
The code is open source and free software. Red Hat used to be proud, that all their code is free software. Even if they change this mindset, 99.99% is already available as free software for anyone who cares about it.
Red Hat provides some value on top of what’s available elsewhere, but they don’t have a monopoly on this added value either. You can get a full-fledge linux distribution from Ubuntu for free, you can also buy professional services from plenty other vendors.
What’s the problem? People, in particular people you can code, trust Linux or Red Hat because the code is public. I don’t want to compile from source; I don’t want to review this huge pile of code. However, since the code is widely available, widely used, and transparently built from a common code base, chances are that someelse has looked at the source code. It’s much harder to hide a backdoor, intentional or not, if the source and build process is public.
Maybe you can compare this to elections in a democracy. Everything is public. Anyone who cares can watch the whole thing. This generates trust in the system.
Red Hat or IBM is changing the system, creating doubt. Realistically the code in RHEL will not differ much from what’s publically known, but there’s a wall of fog now. And those who know is discouraged to disclose the delta.
Also, culturally, Red Hat is signalling they want to talk to ‘corporate’ buyers, not their ‘actual’ users. Sure, RH and the clients have always been corporates, but friendly.
Red Hat was one of the first distros and the first big player in open source. Now, open source is everywhere, but Red Hat is dead.