In a First, AlmaLinux Patches a Security Hole That Remains Unpatched in Upstream RHEL - FOSS Force
In a First, AlmaLinux Patches a Security Hole That Remains Unpatched in Upstream RHEL - FOSS Force
Photo : AlmaLinux Day, held on March 18, 2024 in Rust, Germany. Does that mean more Rust in the Linux kernel ? :-)
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Nice and all, but...
Projects leaching on the work of companies like that, "freeing the code" (which literally just means huge companies will not pay a cent for Linux in the future too) and adding their 2 cents, is not really a big effort.
The same thing with other projects that "became nonfree" and where forked to "stay free".
If a license says "you can use it for free, but need to share profits over x$" it is free software in any way we should be concerned about it.
Projects leaching on the work of companies like that, "freeing the code".
You mean it the other way, right? Because these companies you defend use the free labor of voluntary developers from the community, which spend hours and hours developing features, fixing bugs and what not, directly or indirectly. That's how open source works.
When these companies change the project license to a closed source one, they're basically saying a big "f*** you" to the community. Forking the latest open source version of the repository is nothing more than an effort to keep things the way they were.
huge companies will not pay a cent for Linux in the future
Linux is FOSS, you can do whatever you want with it as long as you redistribute it without modifying the license. Android does that; every GNU/Linux distribution does that. That's how it works.
if a license says "you can use it for free, but need to share profits over x$"
What you're describing is "freeware", what this post is discussing is " open source software". There's a giant gap between the two.
The issue started when Mr. Root Mean Square came up with the term "Free Software". It should have been called "freedom respecting software" and we would not have to deal with people confusing free software with Free Software.
Yeah, but there's also the term "freeware", which means closed source but free to use.
I'll edit my comment for clarity, thanks for the heads up.
Then by that logic, redhat is leeching off the work of the Linux kernel developers and the other Foss software in redhat
They offer support for it and contribute a lot to all those projects. But I was mainly focused on projects restricting their license, RHEL is a complicated topic.
Dafuq you talking about, son? RedHat isn't selling FOSS as a product. They are essentially selling enterprise support for a specific collection of packages that are rolled into a Linux Distribution the distribute themselves, and is then backed with a slew of SLA and SLO contracts that back it. On top of that, their own tooling which they do open source is included with thos things. Why do you think Alma exists at all?
They do sell the specific collection, and even more so updates, as a product and restrict redistribution of that product by their customers.
They do their upstream development in the open which is not required but mighty nice of them.
Companies like Redhat are a small price to pay for open source software to exist under capitalism. Would I prefer copyleft software not involve any money at all? Sure. But that's not realistic when Linux is this big and complex. Big companies fund a lot of Linux' development but we get free copy left use of it and that's a good compromise for me.