This is the first of, probably, many posts about the changes to how Red Hat distributes RHEL sources, RHEL clones in general. Not to mention the past, present, and future of FOSS development and business.
Short version: There's probably something in this post for everybody to disagree with.
So I asked RMS what he thought about the whole RHEL story, since he's one of the co-authors of the GPL, and his answer was that he's not reached a conclusion yet and that "it's complicated".
If you see the AGPL licenses on my free and open source work and you think “damn you, I can’t use this to enrich myself or my corporation without sharing back what I’ve built on top of what you’ve freely shared and thus contribute to cultivating a healthy commons where others might enjoy the same benefits from my work that I want to obtain from yours” (a) you really have long-winded thoughts and (b) well, you already see the flaw in your reasoning.
#Redis just confirms that "permissive" #OpenSource licenses should be understood as "permission to exploit".
A #CLA is a red flag (unless perhaps to a NGO/charity).
Look for projects that chose strong Free, Libre, Open Source protections - such as the #GPL / #AGPL / #EUGPL and a Developer-Certificate-of-Origin (#DCO) rather than setting yourself up.
... do we want to take a bet on how long it takes for #redis to get forked and their business to fold anyway, having caused the damage?
In the Q&A, someone asks Hinton about the ethical dilemmas of #LLM training on copywritten data, to which he responds that he's only done research on the existential risk of AI and others understand the ethical arguments surrounding #labor issues better than him, so he has no comment.
Next someone asks his opinion on #FOSS LLMs to which he responds:
"If these things are going to be dangerous it might actually be better for just a few big companies — I don't work for #Google anymore so I'm not saying this on their behalf — but it might work out for a few big companies, preferably in several countries, to develop this stuff along with ways of keeping it under control. As soon as you #OpenSource anything, people will start doing all sorts of crazy things with it; it will be a really quick way to learn how far things can go wrong"
Um, wasn't this figured out back in 2007? It's called #AGPL, the AI-safe #gnu license that demands that anyone who interacts with the programs built from modified source code have readily-available access to that very source code.
Call me crazy, but I'm much more compfortable with software that everyone can audit than trusting a few corporations who are wreaking havoc on the planet as we speak.
@fsf Where can I read about the legal licensing and copyleft issues surrounding generative AI algorithms like LLMs (Large Language Models) like Chat-GPT or Copilot, trained on GPL'd source code?
I wonder if there is a need for a new license that explicitly makes training generative AI on open source code requires the AI model to be open sourced?
Does the FSF have any written opinions or educational materials related to this topic of the relationship between copyleft and generative AI trained on copyleft source code?
If an open source app developer says their app is only officially available and supported from one specific build, but you would like to distribute it somewhere else, so the app author has added an in-app note when running from an unsupported package saying it's not supported, do you still package it, and how?
"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. The RHEL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux] business model is unfriendly, captious, capricious, and cringe-worthy."
Following up Saturday's post on Red Hat and the Clone Wars with a prequel.
This is a look at early days of Linux and Red Hat's first controversial changes that disrupted clones and copies as it prepared to take on proprietary UNIX and Windows NT.
Red Hat has responded to the claims that it's not an open source company after they moved the RHEL sources behind the customer portal.
I'm of the opinion that their move is NOT in violation of the GPL. Those (paying customers) who have the compiled binaries by Red Hat still have access to the source code. It's still in full compliance (which means I disagree with Bradly Kuhn at the Software Freedom Conservancy).
As usual when I think "this is a rare case where I can't fail!" the reality hits me in the face and takes away this amazing place of "feeling right". I get reminded of my limitations. When will I learn true #humility?
This time my "charge" against paid #Blender add-ons has quickly revealed that I was operating on a false premise.
It turns out #GPL allows giving your source code to paying customers ONLY. It's looked down upon, but it's allowed by the license.
Are there software licenses out there that guarantee to the user the ability to receive updates and improvements to a piece of open source software?
I don't know of any license other than the GPL that provides this guarantee to the user.
I know that I'm more motivated to learn a new tool when it is protected by the GPL because of this guarantee that future versions will also be open source.
When I license my own software, I choose the Affero GPLv3 because it provides this extra guarantee to the users, even if the software serving the user is on a webserver.
for free and open source software, it's usually maintained by a relatively small group of people with small funding or no money involved at all. so hypothetically, when a for-profit company offend a #foss project's #GPL license without releasing their codes. are there ways to fight the offending company without wasting money on lawyers?
❝Today, thanks to Android and ChromeOS, Linux is an important end-user operating system. But, before Linux, there were important Unix desktops, although most of them never made it. …❞
(neo)’liberal’ licenses like MIT and BSD that enable corporations to partake of the free labour of others
implying that the #GPL / #AGPL doesn't let corps partake in the free labor of others too> and enclose the commons
Your "open commons" is worthless if it's effectively still proprietary. Case in point: #Mastodon's #ActivityPub extensions that pretty much everybody else have to support (Mastodon is AGPL, and it's not realistic to implement ActivityPub strictly to the spec and expect it to be compatible with Mastodon). Or GNUisms (implemented by #GNU software which are GPL) that #BSD userlands are forced to support. Or #Matrix where there's basically only one server implementation that is usable (#Synapse whichis AGPL). I could go on and on.
In 1989, we published the GNU #GPL. It is at the core of software freedom and it protects users' rights to run, copy, modify, and share. Read more about free software licensing https://www.fsf.org/licensing
"Activists have found this discussion frustrating, but kept the nature and tenure of these discussions as an “open secret” until now because we all had hoped that Red Hat's behavior would improve. Recent events show that the behavior has simply gotten worse, and is likely to get even worse."
So Broadcom, the new VMware owner in less than a quarter changes the licence model to subscription only, and kicks out most service and sales partner, informing them on the quick that their contracts will be terminated and not renewed. Or perhaps, nobody exactly knows.
That literally screams build your business on closed source products, doesn't it?
They call the #GPL anti business , but somehow the mainstream is quite okay to overlook unacceptable behaviour from the big players?
How should LICENSE relationships be?
Hello,...