[dhruvmittal]

"Ajar source" is definitely the funniest take I've seen on this. Kudos, Bryan.

> In other news, Richard Stallman's head has exploded.

I'm honestly not sure about this one. If I'm recalling Stallman's takes correctly, I think he's fine with "Ajar source" as long as the source is open to Red Hat's customers. I remember him saying something along those lines when explaining how he expects developers to make a living-- something along the lines of it being okay to charge money for your product, but then your customer should have [some list of freedoms].

Maybe the telemetry does it though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mcpackieh]

RMS has always been clear that selling Free Software and only distributing the source to people who bought the software from you is fine. But I don't think he's ever suggested that somebody selling Free Software in this way might threaten to cut their customers off from future updates if they ever exercise their right to redistribute the software they bought. Redistribution is a key part of "[some list of freedoms]", and this "you can redistribute this version but if you do you'll be cut off from future versions" scheme is not something I've ever heard him endorse.

[webmaven]

*> Redistribution is a key part of "[some list of freedoms]", and this "you can redistribute this version but if you do you'll be cut off from future versions" scheme is not something I've ever heard [RMS] endorse.

He likely wouldn't endorse it, but I don't think he would condemn it as non-Free. After all, if a company wants to "fire" a customer, they're allowed to do so, for whatever stupid reason they like.

As far as the customer's freedoms are concerned, as long as they're aware that by redistributing they're pulling the ripcord on the relationship and starting (or switching to) an unfriendly fork, well, that's just an oddly formal version of the process.