The GPL only cares about ensuring the four freedoms are maintained for binaries and their related sources. It has nothing to say about other services you may or may not be asked to pay for. Indeed as you say the GPL allows for reasonable costs to supply source code. We have gotten used to this being ubiquitous and “free as in beer” but it’s not really. All this distribution costs someone somewhere money to do.
The four freedoms may say you can run the program for any purpose without restriction but there are definitely other laws that would have a say if you did certain things with those programs.
The GPL only cares about ensuring the four freedoms are maintained for binaries and their related sources.
No, the GPL goes beyond that. It not only ensures those four freedoms, but also ensures the freedom to exercise them without restriction. That’s what the language in section 6 is meant to protect. If RH only limited potential access to future releases of binaries, I see that as fine and not a restriction. But RH is going well beyond that by terminating existing contracts; accounts; technical, web, and support access; and not refunding monies paid in advance for those services. (Theoretically, since they haven’t done it to anyone yet that I’m aware of.) If legally those actions are not deemed a “restriction”, then I’d agree with you.
The GPL only cares about ensuring the four freedoms are maintained for binaries and their related sources. It has nothing to say about other services you may or may not be asked to pay for. Indeed as you say the GPL allows for reasonable costs to supply source code. We have gotten used to this being ubiquitous and “free as in beer” but it’s not really. All this distribution costs someone somewhere money to do.
The four freedoms may say you can run the program for any purpose without restriction but there are definitely other laws that would have a say if you did certain things with those programs.
No, the GPL goes beyond that. It not only ensures those four freedoms, but also ensures the freedom to exercise them without restriction. That’s what the language in section 6 is meant to protect. If RH only limited potential access to future releases of binaries, I see that as fine and not a restriction. But RH is going well beyond that by terminating existing contracts; accounts; technical, web, and support access; and not refunding monies paid in advance for those services. (Theoretically, since they haven’t done it to anyone yet that I’m aware of.) If legally those actions are not deemed a “restriction”, then I’d agree with you.