Red Hat Developer Demands Competitor's Source Code

sfcrazy writes "A very serious argument erupted on the Linux kernel mailing list when Andy Grover, a Red Hat SCSI target engineer, requested that Nicholas A. Bellinger, the Linux SCSI target maintainer, provide proof of non-infringement of the GPL. Nick is developer at Rising Tide Systems, a Red Hat competitor, and a maker of advanced SCSI storage systems. Nick's company recently produced a groundbreaking technology involving advanced SCSI commands which will give Rising Tide Systems a lead in producing SCSI storage systems. Now, RTS is blocking Red Hat from getting access to that code as it's proprietary. What's uncertain is whether RTS' code is covered by GPL or not — if it is then Red Hat has all the rights to get access to it and it's a serious GPL violation."

Comments

Epic grammar fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, RTS is blocking Red Hat for getting access to that code as its proprietary.

What is this I don't even

Guilty until proven innocent?

[YodasEvilTwin]

That's what it seems like from the summary. If not can anyone explain why? I'm not about to read a kernel mailing list.

Re:Guilty until proven innocent?

[greg1104]

This is a no lose political play by RedHat; they never expected there was a real licensing violation. Consider the two outcomes here:

-Rising Tide Systems says that it developed their EXTENDED_COPY and COMPARE_AND_WRITE commands under a different license, walled off from the main code they contributed to the kernel under the GPL. (That's what they've done now). Then RedHat's sales position is that people who buy Rising Tide's Linux are getting a licensed closed-source product. It is guaranteed not to integrate smoothly with the *real* Linux kernel because of the architecture needed to keep it licensed differently, it's not getting community review for features and security issues, and if Rising Tide goes out of business their customers are screwed--good old fashioned vendor lock-in.

-Rising Tide rolls over and releases their code into the mainline kernel. Now RedHat benefits from it being available too.

RedHat makes much of its money from companies that are moving to open-source because they are sick of the downsides of commercial software, which go from quality issues to vendor lock-in. They're compelling Rising Tide to either give away somethings they're trying to keep closed, or to shame themselves by admitting they're not really an open-source team player. RedHat can launch that sort of acusation safely because they are operating very transparently. We know that companies are not locked in to RedHat from how many clones of it exist. When CentOS and Scientific Linux work, clearly RedHat is sharing all the important parts. And if you've made that part of your competing position, preaching down to people who are not sharing as being sellers of inferior products is very easy to do.

Re:Moral: Never look at, much less touch, GPL code

[queazocotal]

The same issue can occur with commercial code too.

It's basically a risk for any non-completely-free licence, including explicitly non-paid-for ones.

You can be put in exactly the same position by being accused by a commercial vendor of using their code.
And the solution for the vendor is the same - sue for copyright infringement, and it'll come out if the code is infringing or not.

It isn't clear cut.

[pavon]

First off this is nothing like the Oracle case. That was a case about reimplementing APIs, and has nothing to do with linking against someone-else's code that provides APIs. Secondly, it is a stretch to say that the RTS SCSI target is just including APIs. It is using all sorts of internal kernel functions that go far beyond what most reasonable programmers would consider to be an API to the kernel. If you interpret things that liberally, then any proprietary modifications to a GPL application would be allowed by just bundling up the list of functions you happen to use and calling it an API.

Re:Should be easy to resolve.

[Rich0]

Yup, and if found innocent they'd countersue for defamation and slander. You can't just go around accusing people of committing a crime without proof.

Can you prove to me that you didn't beat your wife this morning? How about we find a third party and have them set up cameras and monitor you 24x7 at home for a few weeks just to be sure?

You can't go around accusing people without proof and expect them to jump through hoops to prove their innocence.

Re:is it shipping to customers ?

[Immerman]

Besides, its only the back-flow of contributed changes that would make the GPL apply to their original code, and perhaps not even that
would be sufficient. Does a contributed two line patch drag the entire original proprietary source into the GPL?

Not quite - if the proprietary module links into the Linux subsystems, as seems extremely likely, then the whole module likely becomes a derivative work, the exact details become very important in that case. The nVidia drivers walk this line, which is why you don't see them integrated into with any Linux distro - doing so would tilt the balance towards the derivative work interpretation and is likely to elicit a cease-and-desist letter.