TheGrandNagus, (edited )

No, we aren’t saying the same thing, because you’re talking nonsense and I am not.

Closed source means computer programs whose source code is not published except to licensees

Nowhere in your link does it actually say that. And amusingly, by that definition, software where the source code isn’t provided to licensees isn’t closed source. What? So software where the code is a total black box that nobody other than the programmer knows isn’t closed source in your mind?

But here’s something it does say:

Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it

Let’s go through the two listed criteria, shall we?

  • Legal monopoly to exclude the user from sharing the software: RHEL doesn’t have this. They can’t sue anybody for sharing the code.
  • Legal monopoly to exclude the user from modifying the code: RHEL doesn’t have this. RHEL users are free to modify the code as they wish.

Saying “if you clone and republish RHEL, taking advantage of our work to undercut us with minimal effort, we reserve the right to not have you as a continued customer” is perhaps against the spirit of many open source licences, on that I agree, but it’s a far cry from being closed source. RHEL isn’t like MacOS or Windows.

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