this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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I really can't comment on the legality aspect, but again, I would assume they asked real law experts before the move. On the morality of it, I can put my 2 cents forward. The way I understand it, companies buy Red Hat for the support, testing and the guarantee that what they buy is stable. And I think that's the product, not the source code. In simpler terms, RH is not selling Apache (for example), they are selling this specific version of Apache, compiled in this specific way, running on this specific version of the kernel etc etc. If someone else comes and sells the exact same thing, but without putting the work towards testing, bugfixing, backporting and whatever else RH does is what we call in the industry a "dick move" :) In the end, why does Oracle/Rocky/Alma want to sell the same exact thing when they could build their own? I think it's because it's extremely expensive to do all that and they just want to do the easy part which is providing support.
And as I was saying in a reply towards someone else: I think all of this is targeting Oracle, not some startup with no customers. But Oracle knows when to shut up, we didn't hear a pip from them in all of this.