So basically all those who used CentOS and did not contribute anything even though CentOS cried for contributions for years until Red Hat eventually bought them? (=Most notably Oracle.)
Not contributing is not necessarily freeloaders. Users have no obligation. That’s the point of open source. Only building off of open code and the closing yours off is freeloading.
Oracle and others used the source code and publish their distro’s source. Oracle not contributing is jerky, sure, but for them to be freeloaders they would have to use enterprise linux as a basis for a pay walled proprietary or restricted source OS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but their business model is using Oracle Linux in their cloud offerings.
Red Hat is still the biggest FOSS contributor. (I use openSUSE and SteamOS, btw, so I’m not even a RH product user.)
Hell, I use Fedora, so anything I contribute to is upstream of RHEL. I’m not saying RH socks. There are a lot of great people they employ and their business has been a huge positive for FOSS. But those (great) achievements were and are premised on community collaboration, and it’s more than fair to raise a stink about it.
It’s really not a loophole.
You’re right about GPL. I have nothing against paid software. I was more describing the broader enterprise linux ecosystem. That is to say, RHEL’s success is based on making it an open standard. The greater community can contribute either directly to the upstream or to the application ecosystem, with the understanding their work is applicable to the FOSS community. Closing the downstream is a loophole out of this system where they get to profit. It’s a bait and switch.
Simply reusing Red Hat’s source RPMs isn’t an open ecosystem. All the EL downstreams finally collaborating is.
“Ecosystem” wasn’t referring to the existence of clone distros but the development and adoption of enterprise linux they enable(d). The ecosystem is not only those directly contributing to enterprise linux but the developers targeting enterprise linux and the (IT/CS) user base familiarizing itself with enterprise linux. The market for a RHEL clone is not the market for RHEL enterprise solutions. As I said above, free availability of clones gets people into the ecosystem, and on the corporate end, as long as RH’s offerings aren’t enshittified, Red Hat converts these people into customers. It should be a win-win, but short-term profit maximization will hurt its trust and future growth.