sfc is a non-profit home and infrastructure support organization for free and open source software projects.
Since the announcement of the acquisition of Red Hat by IBM, the community was divided and many assured that the purchase of Red Hat would not be something positive for the community despite the fact that IBM assured that nothing would change and that everything would be the same, which It was not like that, since with the movement to eliminate CentOS many doubts began to arise about the future of the distribution.
And it seems that problems have begun to emerge, as Bradley M. Kuhn, CEO and co-founder of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), outlined the GPL compliance issues stemming from Red Hat's business model.
In the post he mentions that:
Red Hat has managed to build a business model that on the one hand looks and works like a proprietary model and on the other hand tries to take into account the terms of the GPL.
SFC representatives caught the attention of Red Hat management and lawyers about the hostile nature of the business model for open source software, but lConcerns raised were ignored, in some cases with a proposal to sue if someone believes that Red Hat violates the GPL.
For a long time, such discussions were an "open secret", since there was hope that Red Hat would change its behavior, but the actions to remove CentOS and stop public access to RHEL srpm packages show that the situation is only getting worse for Red Hat.
Red Hat's business model, which is that each copy of RHEL includes a support contract and a subscription to receive updates does not formally conflict with the GPL. The agreement with Red Hat mentions the unlimited reproduction, redistribution, and reinstallation rights granted by the GPL, but also states that the company reserves the right to terminate the agreement if the actual installed and purchased copies of RHEL do not match, forcing you to a choose between free disposal of the software and retention of Red Hat customer status.
According to Red Hat's lawyers, the company's business model is consistent with the GPL., since the GPL does not require the preservation of contractual relationships between organizations. SFC lawyers are not sure about this, as the contractual relationship can be terminated by actions that are guaranteed in the GPL. Who is right can only be determined in court.
The business model is balancing to the limit, and the slightest deviation from the established rules can lead to a more obvious violation of a free license. As an example, two cases of GPL violation due to addition of additional agreements by Red Hat are given. In both cases, Red Hat agreed with the claims and stopped submitting problematic claims to customers.
In the first case, a company using RHEL in its infrastructure started shipping its own products. publicly available packages based on CentOS and included several proprietary packages built directly from the RHEL package sources. Red Hat claimed that the product contained RHEL components and offered to pay royalties on sales. Otherwise, Red Hat threatened to stop providing support services and disable access to updates. As the company was very powerful (a Fortune 500) and experienced in solving legal problems, it did not budge and Red Hat did not dare to terminate the contract with it.
In this situation, there was a clear violation of the terms of the GPL, since the requirement to pay royalties can be seen as placing additional restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL license. The text of the GPL expressly states that it is unacceptable to charge license fees and royalties for exercising the rights that the license already grants. Red Hat attempted to impose an additional restriction and thus violated the GPL.
In the second case, Red Hat introduced a requirement in a country to sign an additional agreement if the customer reduced the number of systems with RHEL in the service contract. The agreement required the organization to remove any excess copies of RHEL beyond those specified in the new agreement. This requirement violated the terms of the GPL regarding the inadmissibility of future restrictions and the rights granted by the license to make any number of copies of the program. The Provider cannot require the deletion of legally purchased copies of GPL-licensed software.
The representatives of the SFC organization do not exclude that the cases mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg and that customers may encounter other abuses by Red Hat, which may impose additional conditions, taking advantage of customers' ignorance of the nuances of the business model and the rights provided by the GPL.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.