On 06/19/2014 11:47 AM, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
> I do not care what any lawyer has to say on this topic, because this 
> is not a legal question. 

Sure it is.

> Absolutely everyone reading this, including you, knows full well that 
> the intent of the GPL -- indeed, its entire purpose -- is to enable 
> precisely the kind of effort performed by the Scientific Linux 
> maintainers _without undue burden_. 

The release of source code the way Red Hat is currently releasing that 
source code is fully within the spirit of the GPL, at least in my opinion.

Building packages out of git isn't really that much harder than setting 
up mock to build from a directory full of source RPMS (I've done this 
for EL5 on IA64, by they way, and it's not exactly easy to do, either); 
it's just different, and there is and will be a learning curve.  The 
CentOS team has a publicly accessible QA tree out there already for 
testing-only purposes.  The issue with the lack of signatures is not a 
GPL compliance problem; GPL requires modified sources to be released, 
but it has never required that release to be signed.

Would I like things to be the way they were when Red Hat Linux 7 was 
still named after a city (not RHEL 7; RHL 7, back before the turn of the 
century)?  In some ways yes; in other ways no.

On the bright side, the flurry of effort and collaboration is downright 
refreshing.  It almost makes me want to jump in and maintain something 
again.... almost.  I did that for five years, ten years ago, and still 
get e-mails demanding that I fix something for free....

> If some shyster finds some nuanced loophole that allows his employer 
> to thwart this purpose, that says a lot more about the shyster and the 
> employer than it does about the GPL. - Pat 

Again I ask you to point me to a publicly accessible download repo of 
current SLES source RPMs.  Now ask yourself why SLES source is hard to 
find relative to RHEL source.

Now, the Red Hat model is really pretty simple: you could, if you want 
to and have a current RHEL subscription, download all the current 
GPL-covered source RPMs of EL7 and post them to a public server and be 
within your rights granted by the GPL.  But Red Hat can remove your 
access to updates if you do so (GPL doesn't give you the automatic right 
to receive future versions of source from your current version of the 
binary;  you only have the guarantee to the version of the source that 
matches the version of the binary that you received).  Nothing in the 
GPL requires the one who distributes the binary to provide public access 
to the sources, either; only the person(s) to whom the binaries are 
distributed have the right to demand source from the distributor (and 
only for the version of those binaries that they possess).

But namecalling isn't really necessary, is it?