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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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[–] wmassingham@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can we stop pretending that ML chatbots know what they're talking about? They don't.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Bing Chat is wrong. RHEL customers are legally allowed to share the code. What Red Had can do, and that has nothing to do with the GPL, is to end the contract with the customer who shared the code, thereby according to the GPL the customer also no longer has any right to access the code. The GPL only applies to software distribution, not contracts outside copyright law.

Edit: Red Hat is under no obligation to share non-copyleft code of which there is plenty in a Linux distribution but they do. Just look at Apple: Take plenty of FOSS code, give back only a fraction. It sucks but it's legal. That's also why Apple moved away from GPL software – can't even bothered to ship BASH with macOS.

[–] ndr@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes. I just don’t know if it’s good to phrase it as “RHEL customers are legally allowed to share the code”, since as soon as they do it they won’t be allowed to be customers anymore lol (assuming Red Hat finds out)

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just don’t know if it’s good to phrase it as “RHEL customers are legally allowed to share the code”, since as soon as they do it they won’t be allowed to be customers anymore lol (assuming Red Hat finds out)

It's not good to phrase it the way Bing Chat does and claim that it's illegal either.

Btw, I find it funny how short the memory of many users is. Canonical claims copyright for all compiled binaries of non-GPL code (this includes OpenSSL, Xorg, and Wayland, among many others): https://ubuntu.com/legal/intellectual-property-policy ("Any redistribution of modified versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical if you are going to associate it with the Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries.")

[–] trachemys@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

assuming Red Hat finds out

If RedHat is serious, they can put watermarking/stenography on the code they give you. Might not be proof in court, but enough to figure you are the leaker.

[–] apatters@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Whether RedHat is violating the GPL by cancelling the contracts of customers who exercise their rights under the GPL is an open question. There certainly is not a consensus on this in the open source community, the Software Freedom Conservancy seems to lean toward the view that RedHat's new policy is in violation - https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

However the only way to find out is for someone to challenge RedHat in court. IANAL but if you could demonstrate in a court that RedHat has actually had a pattern of behavior where they are canceling contracts whenever people exercised their rights under the software license, I think you might have a pretty good case. IBM for their part has good lawyers and is basically saying bring it on, this is business.

[–] trachemys@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

RedHat telling customers they can only enter agreement with them if they don’t choose to use their rights is the same thing as denying their rights. That’s a mighty fine hair to split, but I understand something like that could be argued in court. I still feel this completely neuters the whole point of the GPL. Authors who chose the GPL did so with the clear expectation that redistribution would be paid forward. I hope FSF chooses to go to court over this.

[–] fhein@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

"programmed to" sounds like a human sat down and wrote explicit instructions for how to answer this specific question. It might also just be that the language model was trained on texts that predominantly said that RHEL is not violating the GPL. I don't think anyone outside Microsoft can know which one it is.

[–] 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.

[–] ndr@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s simple: they can redistribute it since it’s GPL, but if they do so, they break their business contract with RedHat, so they’re not customers anymore and can’t see the source code in the future.

GPL doesn’t mean that they must give the code to everyone, only that you have those rights as long as you have the software. So RedHat is not forced to have everyone as a customer, and according to them, distributing the code kicks you out.

They can still re-distribute the current source they have, but will not have access to future source code.

[–] trachemys@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is just denying redistribution with extra steps.

[–] ndr@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The point is that it does not violate the GPL.

[–] trachemys@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you deny redistribution, you are violating GPL. Do you agree with that?

So the question is then, does telling someone to promise not to do something, and punishing them if they do, violate there right to it?

[–] ndr@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This has the best explanation I’ve seen: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

In particular, see the section “What Exactly Is the RHEL Business Model?”.

Or, if you want a short sentence to read only:

Whether that analysis is correct is a matter of intense debate, and likely only a court case that disputed this particular issue would yield a definitive answer on whether that disagreeable behavior is permitted (or not) under the GPL agreements.

[–] trachemys@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree that all that can be done is sue them and lets the courts decide what the meaning of the GPL contract is.

I’m surprised at the link you gave since it is written by someone who agrees with my take, not yours and RedHat’s. And you stated clearly that RedHat absolutely is not violating the GPL, when that is actually just your opinion. The real tldr quote of that article is:

Debates continue, even today, in copyleft expert circles, whether this model itself violates GPL. There is, however, no doubt that this provision is not in the spirit of the GPL agreements.

Time for a GPL version 4: no extraneous agreements that nullify GPL terms.

My apologies if I seem too hostile.

[–] ndr@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I should’ve been more neutral with my statement.

My takeaway is that so far no one has proved that Red Hat is violating the GPL. On the other hand, Red Hat has provided an explanation that would imply how it works without violating the GPL. So what I’m saying is that if they’re right, then all that I’ve said so far is correct. If they’re wrong, we don’t know yet.

I’m not a lawyer or a Red Hat employee; I’m just here to share my understanding. I posted that link because I thought they explained it well, and yeah, it is not 100% clear yet. But for this same reason, I would not say with confidence that they’re violating the GPL.

[–] PriorProject@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Username does not check out. This comment is inappropriately clueful.