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.

@a1ba actually, the "free software" is built around the idea of the freedom of the user. It has zero things in terms of "protecting" the developer.

Free Software is actually about restricting the developer so they don't infringe on the freedoms on the users.

@a1ba the point is, that by the GPL, you have to get the source code to the exact product you're given, not a "find it over in that garbage pile, it's there somewhere".

and by the gpl, then you are allowed to get that source and redistribute it. If redhat has a problem with that, they have a problem of one of the cornerstones of software freedoms. This is not an opinion, this is a fact.

@a1ba yeah. And this is what they do and they have the right to do that and technically they could give the source printed on toilet paper, so I guess they aren't doing the worst possible thing.

But when they go on air disparaging one of the fundamental software freedoms (redistribution), I can't take their "we're fully committed" message seriously.