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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Looks like bing chat is programmed to insist that RedHat RHEL is not violating the GPL… (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by trachemys@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I admit I know nothing about what programs RedHat has contributed to, or what their plans are. I am only familiar with the GPL in general (I use arch, btw). So I tried to have Bing introduce me to the situation. The conversation got weird and maybe manipulative by Bing.

Can you explain to me why Bing is right and I am wrong?

It sounds like a brazen GPL violation. And if RedHat is allowed to deny a core feature of the GPL, the ability to redistribute, it will completely destroy the ability of any author to specify any license other than MIT. Perhaps Microsoft has that goal and forced Bing to support it.

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[–] nous@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

There are a lot of factors at play here. And I think a lot of people don't understand them all. Not all software is under GPL, so to say RHEL is under the GPL is wrong. Parts of it are, but not all of it. But let's take a GPL package, like the kernel. The kernel itself is GPL, but that doesn't mean the packaging code is, ie the source rpm that was written by Redhat (not the build tools and makefiles distributed with the kernel).

I don't know what if any license the packaging code is, for any distros. It is not normally something people think about. But as far as I understand the GPL I do not think it automatically includes the code used to package applications written in it.

So it is not as simple as most people think it is. Redhat likely do have a claim to be able to restrict others from distributing their packages, just not the application code inside the packages.

Though doing so is a massive dick move on their part.