In what seems like an email accidentally kept as a draft, the nonprofit Free Software Foundation (FSF) has spoken out about the closure of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) two years after it happened. In mid-2023, Red Hat decided to make RHEL closed-source, prompting questions to the FSF.
Shortly after the Red Hat announcement, a user wondered what the FSF’s position on this issue was. As maintainers of the GNU General Public License, this group’s response would have carried some rhetorical weight, albeit without direct implications for Red Hat as the group is not in the habit of suing.
Response
Complaints back in 2023 suggested that Red Hat violated the GNU GPL rights by closing existing subscriptions earlier, but the FSF can only offer moral support at this point. The group does state that in general terms, it does not agree with Red Hat’s actions. “Whether it constitutes a violation of the GPL would require legal analysis and the FSF does not give legal advice”, it states. “However, as the stewards of the GNU GPL we can speak how it is intended to be applied and Red Hat’s approach is certainly contrary to the spirit of the GPL. This is unfortunate, because we would expect such flagship organizations to drive the movement forward.”
“As of today, we are not aware of any issue with Red Hat’s new policy that we could pursue on legal grounds. However, if you do find a violation, please follow these instructions and send a report to license-violation@gnu.org.”
Late and unnecessary
The FSF also cites a response from the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), which is a nonprofit that does indeed lawyer up from time to time to defend open-source licenses wherever applicable. Another difference between the FSF and the SFC here is that the two analyses from the latter about the RHEL incident were published in June and July 2023, relatively soon after the move was first announced by Red Hat.
As a small group, the Free Software Foundation argues that it is unable to respond to all emails in a timely manner. That is understandable, but it is still surprising that it took over a year and a half to answer this user’s questions. There’s finally some clarity on the matter, at least.
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