Executive Director and co-founder of human rights organization sFC (Summit Freedom Conservancy), Bradley M. Kuhn, raised concerns over Red Hat’s business model and how it aligns with the GPL license requirements. Despite the sFC drawing attention to the unfavorable nature of Red Hat’s business model towards the GPL, their concerns were not addressed by Red Hat’s leadership and lawyers.
Red Hat’s business model appears to be a hybrid of a proprietary and open source model, which complicates its alignment with the GPL license requirements. The company’s approach to supporting and distributing Rhel (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) is based on each copy of Rhel being supplied with a contract for support and subscription to receive updates. This way, Red Hat formally does not contradict the GPL, as the agreement mentions GPL rights to unlimited replication, redistribution, and reinstallation.
However, Red Hat also reserves the right to terminate the contract if the actually established and purchased copies of Rhel do not match, which gives customers a choice between preserving their freedom and preserving their client status. Red Hat’s lawyers argue that their business model aligns with the GPL as the GPL does not mandate the preservation of contractual relations between organizations.
This legal interpretation is a point of disagreement between Red Hat’s lawyers and sFC organization’s lawyers. The GPL permits the termination of contractual relations due to actions guaranteed by the GPL, and sFC’s lawyers believe that the business model’s precarious balance can quickly be disrupted and lead to GPL violations.
Two such cases of GPL violations occurred due to Red Hat adding additional agreements, but they were resolved with Red Hat agreeing to stop making problematic requirements to customers. However, the recent decision to turn off the classic centos and terminate public access to Rhel SRPM packages suggests that the situation is worsening. This indicates that Red Hat’s approach to GPL remains problematic and may require further scrutiny by the legal system.