Final thoughts on the Red Hat thing: every supporter of the Red Hat move told me that "it's normal to want to prevent people from stealing the hard work and making a clone of it".
If you think grabbing the code and reusing it is "stealing", you don't understand FOSS.
No matter what RH clones contribute, or if they're worth it. That's not the point. The point is, RH builds their stuff using the GPL, and they have to redistribute using the GPL.
Making access to a specific part of that code harder on purpose goes against the principles of Free Software.
Period. Money doesn't factor into this, value, contribution, they don't matter. FOSS is free to use, whether you contribute or not. FOSS is for everyone, "freeloaders", developers, anyone. That's the very point.
Yes, the code is still technically available with a bit more work in Stream's repos. That's not the issue. The "people are stealing from us" talk is the issue.
When a company that works in FOSS, and depends on it to operate, calls people using their GPL rights "freeloaders", you know they've lost the plot.
That's the problem. The value, the contribution, the development, the clone or not, the business: it DOESN'T MATTER.
@bjoernricks I’m sure it doesn’t. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying their reaction and “solution “ is wrong and doesn’t even fix the issue.
Basically, they still have the same problem, but now their image is in ruins and they’ve outed themselves are following the letter of the GPL but not it’s spirit.
Disastrous move.
Nick @ The Linux Experiment
Björn Ricks