[dxf]

No, you can redistribute it. RedHat can't stop you.

But you might only be able to do this once. Because what RedHat can do is cancel your contract, and stop you from using RedHat services, and you won't have access to future versions or updates.

[jonhohle]

It sound like RedHat has migrated back to a “purchase” model then. You pay once, get your software and do with it as you please and then they ask you kindly to not pay again, kind of like the old days. Sounds good to me.

As long as one subscriber is willing to leave their contract per release, downstream derivatives should have no end of supply for each release. This may not help with patches, but many of those would come from third parties to begin with.

[zugi]

This is the answer. What RedHat is doing is legal but sneaky. So we can be legal but sneaky too.

Start a consortium that creates a new LLC or non-profit organization with no ties back to the consortium. That new organization buys a license, and publishes the code until RedHat cuts them off. Start a new one and repeat.

Of course it could become a cat and mouse game, where RedHat starts denying customers it deems suspicious. They start demanding more info of their customers. But all that could be bad for business...

[theonemind]

If I understood what you mean, it doesn't sound like it works in any practical sense, because Red Hat wouldn't take you as a customer for release n + 1.

1. You purchase release N

2. You distribute the source code to release N.

3. Red Hat terminates you.

4. You needed Red Hat N. You're doing enterprisey things or using software that runs on Red Hat.

5. Red Hat releases N + 1.

6. You try to get release N + 1 from Red Hat, because you're in the ecosystem, doing enterprisey things, using software that runs on Red Hat

7. Red Hat remembers what you did on release N and doesn't offer you release N + 1.

It doesn't quite seem like the purchase model. This barely seems to get you anything over what a Rocky or Alma or whatever scrape to put together with Red Hat damming distribution, so you might as well resort to them right at release N instead of paying Red Hat for it.

[indigodaddy]

Right that ends up being the same thing. They are making your redistribution a violation of that (sub?)contract

[insanitybit]

That's not the same thing. You can do everything the GPL allows you to do, you are not restricted from that. But RHEL gets to choose who their customers are and they won't choose you. You can't force them to take you on as a customer, no license can