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Kaidao @lemmy.ml
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Red Hat / Fedora drama?

What do you all think of the Red Hat drama a few months ago? I just learned about it and looked into it a bit. I’ve been using Fedora for a while now on my main system, but curious whether you think this will end up affecting it.

My take is that yes, it’s kinda a shitty move to do but I get why RH decided to stop their maintenance given they’re a for profit company.

What do you guys think? Do you still use or would you consider using Fedora?

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86 comments

  • In my view, the “community” reaction was terrible. Regardless of if you agree with them or not, the response should be honest and rational. I found the reaction, emotional, political, and frankly dishonest. The response was that Red Hat was suddenly going proprietary, that they were violating the GPL, and / or that they were “taking” the work of untold legions of free software volunteers without giving back. They were accused of naked corporate greed by companies whose whole business is based on using Red Hat’s work without paying ( peak hypocrisy ).

    Let’s start with what they actually did. Red Hat builds RHEL first by contributing all their code and collecting all the Open Source packages they use into a distribution called CentOS Stream. Once in a while, they fork that and begin building a new release of RHEL. That requires lots of testing, packaging, configuration, documentation, and other work required to make RHEL above and beyond the source code. Previously, they made the output of all this work publicly available. What they did was stop that. So, what does it look like now?

    Red Hat now only distributes the RHEL SRPM packages to their subscribers ( which may be paying customers or getting it free ). The support agreement with Red Hat says that, if you distribute those to others, they will cancel your subscription. That is the big controversy.

    What you cannot do now is “easily” build a RHEL clone that is guaranteed “bug for bug” compatible with RHEL and use it to compete with Red Hat. You will notice that those making the most noise, like Rocky Linux, want to do that.

    So, are Red Hat violating the GPL? No.

    First, Red Hat distributes all the code to make RHEL to the actual people they “distribute to” ( to their subscribers ) including everything required to configure and build it. This is everything required by the GPL and more.

    Second, less than half of the code in RHEL is even GPL licensed. The text of the GPL itself says that the requirements of the GPL do not extend to such an “aggregate” ( the term the GPL itself uses ). So, Red Hat is going quite above and beyond the licensing by providing their subscribers code to the entire distribution. Yes, beyond.

    Third, CentOS Stream remains open to everybody. You can build a Linux distribution from that that is ABI compatible with RHEL. That is what Alma Linux is doing now. Red Hat contributes mountains of free software to the world, both original packages and contributions to some of the most important packages in the free software world. Red Hat is not required to license packages they author under the GPL but they do. They are not required to make all of CentOS Stream available to the public but they do. They are certainly not freeloaders.

    But what about this business of cancelling subscriptions? Isn’t that a restriction in violation of the GPL? Not in my view.

    The GPL says that you are free to distribute code you receive under the GPL without fear of being accused of copyright violation. It says you can modify the code and distribute your changes. It says you can start a business in top of that code and nobody can stop you. Do RHEL subscribers enjoy all these freedoms. Yes. Yes they do.

    What happens ( after the change ) when a RHEL subscriber violates the terms of their subscriber agreement? Well, they cease to be a subscriber. Does this mean they lose access to the source they got from RHEL? No. Does it mean they can be sued for distributing the code? No. I mean, you could risk trademark violation if you sell it I guess.

    So, what does it mean that RHEL cancels your subscription? Well, it means they will no longer support you. I hope people see that as fair. It also means as bs they will no longer distribute their software to you IN THE FUTURE.

    That is it. That is the outrage.

    If you give away the results of Red Hat’s hard work to productize CentOS Stream into RHEL, they stop sending you future releases.

    Again, that is it.

    You can do whatever you want with what they already sent you. You have all the rights the GPL provides, even for software licenses as MIT, BSD, Apache, or otherwise. Nothing has been taken from you except access to FUTURE Red Hat product ( other than totally for free via CentOS Stream of course ).

    Anyway, as you can see, they are the devil and we should hope their business fails. Because, why would we want a commercial successful company to keep contributing as much to Free Software and Open Source as they do?

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    • So, are Red Hat violating the GPL? No.

      But what about this business of cancelling subscriptions? Isn’t that a restriction in violation of the GPL? Not in my view.

      You are just repeating the exact narrow definition that Redhat/IBM's lawyer leeches found to justify what they did. Yes it's legal - but by no means in the spirit of GPL or any FSF or OSI approved license.

      Starting with the FSF definition, ANY software from OUTSIDE that RH builds on (this includes the kernel and numerous other parts) comes to them with 4 assured freedoms. One of them is the freedom to distribute the software or the modified forms of it. To put it in short, what RH says is - "You're still free to exercise the freedom - but we will stop doing business with you if you do". While this is not against the letter of the license, this is most certainly AGAINST the INTENT of the license.

      One might ask, if that's the intent of the license, why does the license allow such a loophole? To put it simply, the creators of the license created it based on certain guidelines. But they couldn't foresee all the ways in which the license would be twisted, violating its intent. This happens from time to time - causing the licenses to undergo revisions. For example, GPLv3 was created due to what FSF calls Tivoization - a practice that violates the intent without violating the license. Hell, this is against even OSI's intent.

      However, just because there are loop holes in the license to violate its intent, doesn't mean that it's ethical or moral to take advantage of it. When some company does so, it's nothing short of parasitism. In this case, RH managed to suppress GPL after profiteering for decades from it.

      In my view, the “community” reaction was terrible.

      Clearly, your view is heavily colored. Remember that the community's reaction was only a response to what RH did. You clearly are not seeing the possibility that what RH did is way way worse and extremely damaging towards the community and FOSS principles.

      If you give away the results of Red Hat’s hard work to productize CentOS Stream into RHEL,

      This is a very myopic, one-sided and biased take. A lot of people who are complaining are contributors to the work RH uses. This isn't just about some bit of work. This is about trust that forms the foundations of the FOSS movement. People will be hesitant to contribute to any project that RH may take and profit like this. RH is using their code in a way that they were not expecting. What RH did is to fundamentally exploit that trust and then betray it.

      Nothing has been taken from you except access to FUTURE Red Hat product ( other than totally for free via CentOS Stream of course ).

      The same narrow definitions to justify the malicious intent. Remember that distributing the recipe for 'FUTURE Red Hat product' wouldn't be wrong in any way if RH hadn't created the new clause - that they will stop supplying if you did. They had to invent a way to override the intent of FOSS.

      So, Red Hat is going quite above and beyond the licensing by providing their subscribers code to the entire distribution. Yes, beyond.

      They don't have a business if they didn't distribute the source code. There are numerous other offerings that give you the same services without the source code. They are doing nothing beyond what it takes for them to make money. So, their moral superiority arguments are based on false premises.

      I'm honestly very tired of people shilling the false arguments of corporates that exploit regular folks to make money. The stories of how RH damaged the entire Linux ecosystem for supporting their business is too long for me to even get into. For now, I will just say that RH's entire business model has been to make the Linux ecosystem too complicated for anyone else to reasonably manage or modify. So, please stop giving this greedy corporation more credit than what it's worth and stop demonizing the people who complained when their reasonable expectations were violated.

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      • I am not repeating anything Red Hat has said.( even if they said it ). I have not read any of their responses. I am reacting to what I have read and seen myself in the corners of tue Internet that I frequent ( where I have never seen Red Hat post — like here for example ). My thoughts and analysis are my own.

        “Starting with the FSF definition” you say and then completely ignore what the GPL itself says about aggregates like RHEL. Again, less than half of RHEL is even software released under the GPL. Much of the software that is GPL was authored by Red Hat themselves. According to the text of the GPL itself, Red Hat is not required to distribute the code to the totality of the RHEL distribution or even to more than half the code. That is not a “loop hole”. The authors of the GPL went out of their way to spell this out. The word “aggregate” is introduced in the text of the GPL to specifically differentiate something like a full OS distribution from an individual work released under the GPL and included in that distribution. Beyond the hand-waving, I have never seen somebody explain to me how RHEL itself is governed by the GPL other than as an example of an “aggregate” that the GPL goes out of its way to point out would NOT be governed by the GPL. I have pointed this out many times and, disappointingly, the responses I get always completely ignore this. RHEL is not governed by the GPL other than as something that is specifically and explicitly excluded from the conditions of the GPL by the text of the GPL itself ( not as loop hole but by a section of the license that does not even need to be in the license other than to clarify this very thing ).

        As for the “4 freedoms”, as stated above, you have all 4 of those freedoms for any GPL software from Red Hat. They even extend these freedoms to you for software that does not require it.

        Let’s talk about “the spirit” off Free Software here.

        The controversy is about Red Hat restricting the ability ( really just making it less convenient ) to piggy-back off them to make guaranteed “exact”, “identical”, “bug-for-bug” copies of RHEL. Why does Rocky Linux want to make “bug-for-bug” copies of RHEL? Why does Orace? Why does SUSE? Well that is simple. It is because they have built a business on providing guaranteed compatibility with RHEL.

        What does “bug-for-bug” compatibility with RHEL mean? Well, it means that all that can be done is to rebuild and redistribute the packages created by Red Hat exactly as Red Hat created them. Does “the community” want to use this code as a base for incorporating their own changes and innovations? No. They cannot change it or it would no longer build into a bug-for-bug clone of RHEL. Can they even fix bugs? Again, no. “Bug-for-bug” means having the same bugs.

        The people fighting hardest to take the exact packages output by Red Hat are explicitly fighting for the right to take RHEL without paying and with the express plan of giving absolutely nothing back.

        And you know what, you can still do that with any code you get from Red Hat. If you are going to do that though, they want to stop sending you their future work. The horror.

        The fury around these changes from Red Hat is that people ( most loudly companies that want to compete with Red Hat ) not only want to explicitly take without giving back but they also want to ensure that Red Hat is forced to provide all their future work for free as well. The demand is that Red Hat provide their labour and expense for free—forever.

        And again, to be very clear, we are not even talking about source code. Because Red Hat does give away the code that they produce not just because they have to but because they want to ( they author stuff and make it GPL when they could choose other licenses ). They founded the Fedora project to create an aggressively free distribution and pay the salaries of many of its core contributors. This is very clearly something they volunteer willingly as they founded the project specifically to do that. Red Hat also pays to make CentOS Stream available which has all the same software and code in it as RHEL and can even be ABI compatible ( as Alma is now doing ). All the code, if that is what you want, is very available. Red Hat is not hoarding code. Red Hat is not taking anybody’s code and trying to close it off.

        If this was about the code and the ability to preserve it for “the community” then then there would not be much problem. The problem is that people want specifically to make “bug-for-bug” RHEL clones now and in the future and they want Red Hat to do all the work to make that possible without any contribution from “the community” at all. Again, “the work” here is not authoring source code but all the other work that goes into making a full distribution.

        What “community” is being damaged by telling people to use or fork CentOS Stream instead of trying to make “bug-for-bug” copies of RHEL? How is this “extremely damaging to the community and FOSS principles”?

        If the right to take without giving back is what people mean by “the spirit” of Free Software then this is the moment that I break with Free Software and go fully Open Source.

        For anybody that thinks that Free Software and Open Source are the same thing, Open Source is a pragmatic philosophy about how developer collaboration leads to better software while Free Software ( as defined by the Free Software Foundation ) is a political movement focused on the rights of users ( just user freedoms - explicitly not software author or developer freedoms ). The GPL, specially, restricts the freedom of software developers which is why many other Open Source licenses are often called “permissive” licenses ( because they are MORE free). Not all Open Source software is Free Software by the definition of Open Source provided by the Open Source Institute.

        Red Hat, I notice, voluntarily chooses the GPL for the code they author instead of choosing a more “permissive” license. Interesting choice for such a “greedy corporation”.

        I am all over the idea of collaboration around software development. I do not see though how anybody can claim to credibly fighting for that in this Red Hat spat though. If this were about collaboration ( not just explicit duplication ), I imagine Red Hat would be on board. Based on “the community” reaction, It seems that “the spirit” of Free Software is more about entitlement and the right to demand continued servitude from the people that create software for you. Ask not what I can do for the software but rather what does my software provider HAVE to do for me. Those are not politics that I care to support. Count me out

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    • By the way, I do not use Fedora or RHEL and have no connection to Red Hat of any kind ( though I used to use their distros before Fedora existed and for a bit after — all long ago ).

      10

    • Well said, and this should really be the top comment. Yes, I am mostly a Fedora user these days, but I also love Arch and Debian. I have a lot of respect for the significant contributions that Redhat have given to the community time and time again, and I had zero issue with their recent stance.

      4

    • And all the people that provide the free software RH is using and making money with don't count?! How about RH subscribe to all their projects to be able to repackage and redistribute their code, and if one of them doesn't like RH then they'll just cut them off like RH is doing to their customers. Does that sound like a good direction for the OSS ecosystem to you?

      Of course RH does also provide back to the community, but that is the whole deal! You get free and open code, you give back free and open code. And they are a big company making a lot of money, so of course they should also contribute much more than a handful of devs would. That shouldn't give them the privilege to unilaterally change this deal.

      I get that it's technically within the bounds of the GPL, but it's a loophole and not how an "OSS company" should act imo! The whole OSS ecosystem as we know it would collapse if all projects started doing this.

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      • Red Hat does “subscribe” to the software they ship and fully complies with the terms specified for them to do so. Again, rhetoric completely at odds with the facts.

        Let’s be explicit about the “loophole” that keeps getting talked about. What is it?

        The GPL outlines a bunch of freedoms that you get when somebody distributes software to you. It does not provide any rights to anybody that has not been given software. Is that the loophole?

        Red Hat provides CentOS Stream to everybody and so it, along with all its source code and everything else is available to the public. Only RHEL subscribers have any rights to RHEL because they are they only ones that get it from Red Hat. The public has no inherent right to RHEL, code or otherwise. This is of course compatible with the GPL and not in some nuanced tortured way but of course with its core purpose—to grant freedoms for software that you use ( have been given ). Is that the loophole?

        The GPL talks about the rights you have regarding software you have already received—that you use—not software you may or may not receive in the future. Is that the loophole?

        Importantly though, we are not talking about an individual package covered by the GPL. We are talking about RHEL, which is a collection of software of which less than half is even GPL licensed. On that basis, I submit that the following text ( extracted from the GPL itself ) might be the “loophole” that you are referring to:

        “Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.”

        Again, that language is quoted directly from the license.

        Is that a loophole? Because it seems like a very specific provision to me. Did the authors of the GPL say that the GPL does not extend to all of RHEL by accident?

        1

      • Does the fact that Red Hat provides not one but two explicitly free Linux distributions for free including one ( CentOS Stream ) that includes all the work they do on their flagship product with changes often appearing in the free community version before they appear in their paid product sound like a good direction for the OSS ecosystem? Yes. Yes it does. If every company contributed in the way that Red Hat does, the world of Open Source would be dramatically richer.

        Does giving cover to other commercial entities not just to collaborate and use the same source code but to shamelessly make exact copies of another product while giving nothing at all back sound like a good direction for the Open Source ecosystem. Well, no actually. Not in my mind. This sounds attractive and beneficial to you?

        Based on this episode, I have to say that the GPL itself is starting to come off as less beneficial in mind and less of a good direction for the Open Source ecosystem. The differences between Free Software and Open Source are starting to matter more to me.

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    • As not a lawyer, I'm actually not sure that cancelling the subscription is allowed by the gpl, given that it established that there can be no additional (outside of the license) conditions to share the code. I'd like to see it discussed in court, but I'm not sure interested parties have enough lawyer money for it.

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      • I would say that cancelling your subscription is a direct violation of the GPL for two reasons.

        For example, say I'm someone who installed RHEL under a subscription. I downloaded the source to the kernel then distributed the SRPM to others leading Red Hat to cancel my subscription/account.

        1. With a cancelled subscription/account, how do I now access the buildable source for say the GCC package I have installed on my system as guaranteed under the GPL?

          If Red Hat didn't cancel my subscription/account, but restricted it to only accessing the matching source downloads for the packages on my system, that would be compliant. But they didn't. They killed all my access for matching source which is non-compliant.

          If Red Hat provided a service where I could request buildable copies of the source for the packages I have installed , this would be compliant. But as far as I know, they have not.

        2. Cancelling my subscription/account is a violation of Section 6 of the GPLv2 which states, " You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."

          This clause is to ensure you can freely exercise your rights granted by the GPLv2. Cancelling your subscription/account for no reason other than exercising your rights is a direct violation.

          For example, I have the right to vote. If a government body imposes a hefty fine or tax if I attempted to vote, this would be considered further restrictions on my right to vote. This is what Red Hat has done.

          Red Hat is certainly free to cancel your subscription/account under the terms of their license, but not when it conflicts with the exercise of rights granted under the GPL.

        2

      • I am not a lawyer either but “outside the licence” sounds wrong. The license ( the GPL ) talks about “additional terms” but those are extensions and modifications of the license itself. The only non-license vehicle that the GPL references is patents.

        Importantly, the status of your Red Hat subscription does not modify the terms of the license. Cancellation of your Red Hat subscription does not cause a modification, impairment, or loss of any of the rights, obligations, or freedoms that you have under any GPL covered work that you have received.

        1

  • Yeah? Redhat just backs fedora they don't own it. Fedora is completely separate and run by the community

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  • I had settled on Fedora but after that debacle I decided to move to OpenSUSE - no complaints there.

    There's plenty of choice, why stick with Red Hat?

    16

  • I personally don't like what RH did, but their goals were pretty clear and I don't see how that has anything to do with Fedora. It's still a very good community project that also provides great value to RH themselves, so I don't have any fears that they might stop support, start restricting access or interfering with their work.

    And I completely agree with how they handled the telemetry thing. Telemetry is important, the way they want to implement it is fine with me, and they discussed it at length with the community.

    10

  • There is no justification for this move. Red Hat got seriously rich using FREE LIBRE SOFTWARE and therefore they are BOUND BY THE GPL to freely share and distribute that code.

    They got it for free, they have to pass it on for free. That's the deal with Libre Computing. Yes they can sell their services and no one is infringing on that.

    If some companies decide they will use a free clone of Red Hat because that cannot afford the Red Hat fees, that's their decision. It's not the fault of the free distro. Chances are that that clone distro also offers paid support, which that user is also not paying for. Which is fine.

    Red Hat called the open source community "free loaders" because they reuse the code! WTF?!

    That means according to Red Hat YOU are a free loader because you got Fedora for free. You freaking free loader!

    And not only you but everyone in the community who gets any distro for free are all free loaders!

    Clearly Red Hat have lost the plot and have gone full IBM. I REFUSE to support such a company.

    My view is that no one should use Fedora because you are guinea pigs for Red Hat who takes all the improvements Fedora makes and incorporates then into their Enterprise desktop software.

    Canonical are not much better. They've decided to say "f the users, we will be forcing snaps on everyone". And the Ubuntu flavours are forbidden from adding flatpak support out the box. Another user hostile move.

    Next up: 24.04 will have an all-snaps immutable version alongside the regular ISO. That means they WILL eventually go snaps-only. It's a matter of time.

    So f that too.

    I've realised that the ONLY way to go is to use Community based distros like Debian, Void, Gentoo, Arch etc. Just move away from all corporate Linux.

    Who was responsible for making Linux Subsystem did Windows? Canonical. That was a real dick move against Linux because they reduced it to a simple CLI. As if that's all Linux is.

    Also, having Libre software running inside proprietary software is an offence to the Principles of Libre computing.

    Now I use Linux Mint Debian Edition because it's truly 100% community. And it works great!

    IMO Mint will have to drop Ubuntu within the next 2 years and go Debian only. The writing is on the wall.

    10

  • Well, I moved away from Fedora with the licensing change and telemetry proposal. It's a great distro and it's pretty much the most cohesive experience I've had with linux, but those issues have made me wary. We'll see where they go from here, but for now I'm looking elsewhere.

    9

  • I'm running the Asahi Fedora remix for personal use in multiple Mac workstations because it's what the Asahi folks are recommending/supporting right now, and I'm not too bothered. I figured if there are changes impacting Fedora later, Asahi will go back to Arch (which I actually really liked) .

    At work I manage somewhere between 20-40 servers depending on workload, almost all running commercial software. More than 50% were running Centos, which is what the software manufacturers supported, when the RH announcement was made.

    While I actually understand their reasoning and would happily move to a model where there's a reasonable cost for those licenses, the way they went about it was way too fast and careless, with huge impact to their potential customers. It ironically undermined my trust on them as a company, and I wouldn't want to bet my job on anything that's downstream from or owned by RH right now.

    TLDR; Fine with Fedora as a daily driver, wouldn't touch it for work.

    8

  • I don't think that anything is wrong with Fedora. They are related to RedHat but nothing was changed that affects Fedora, so I'll continue to use it on a system.

    I agree that RedHats changes aren't good and it might be a bad decision long term, seeing how Suse and Oracle are working on their solution.

    7

  • Moved away from Fedora to NixOS. NixOS is damn hard, but I like it that way, I guess? The difficulty with other distro is during the setup phase. The difficulty with NixOS is trying to make binaries run. You're gonna have to learn the language to patch ELF.

    7

  • I might sound a bit dumb, but could someone tell me what the drama is about and in what way it could affect Fedora?

    7

    • RedHat do not like there are clones of their commercial RHEL. And there are commercial activity around clones, which is sure disturbs RedHat. Instead of focusing on themselfes and why people choose other solutions instead of RHEL, they decided to lock sources and getting them is required to register. And people did not liked it, like open source nature is about freedom to get sources. Fedora is a community project, but it belongs to RedHat. Slowing Fedora development by any measures will affect themselves too, so I see no benefits for RedHat to do same to Fedora. But at the other side are Fedora contributors, which could be against RedHat decisions, as they indirectly contribute to RedHat too. As a Fedora user I dont care much what RedHat do, but could it affect Fedora? Yes and no, we will see later.

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  • Enshifitification; now impacting to operating systems too ...

    At this pace, it could only be worse if they were bought by Broadcom

    I'm taking the chance while I can and slowly migrating my lab to Debian

    7

  • Fedora is still solid and will likely be solid for a long time. Redhat can't afford to kill it as it is basicly the desktop version of redhat

    6

  • Fedora is a great distro, I see no reason why the stuff affecting EL would be an issue. I think if Red Hat wanted out of it (not likely since it benefits them as a downstream) they would spin it off into a foundation and it would probably maintain a close relationship. It is not a competitor like CentOS.

    6

  • Red-Hat still have an interest to keep it alive, so I still recommend Fedora to people.

    It's definitely not in the open-source spirit, but as long as the interest exists, it still a great distro for both newbies and advanced users.

    I've found the distro that match my needs, so I won't use Fedora, for that reason.

    5

  • I get their POV. Want stability? Then pay, because that's mostly doable for those who actually need the stability. Fedora is stable enough for others imo, and if that's a bit too fast for you, maybe try CentOS Stream. Afaik that's a bit slower than Fedora, but almost right before RHEL in terms of update/change timelines.

    4

  • Their product offering are worthless to me now than before.

    1

  • In the process of feeling out mx Linux and endeavor... But don't necessarily know enough about the red hat stuff to even have an opinion.

    1

  • I recently started using a fedora based distro. Specifically bazzite which is one of the read only root distros and a drop in replacement for steam os on deck and PC. In the grand scheme of things I don't really see the read hat stuff changing much. Canonical does shit the community at large doesn't like too but people keep using Ubuntu and it's deranged and deformed babies. I mainly used arch(, btw) for a long time but I really don't have any attachments to any particular distro and can switch at any time, like I have recently for consistency between my main computers and steam deck.

    1

  • No matter how tempting, I wouldn't use Fedora since it ships with opt-out telemetry.

    Red Hat has a right to shoot itself in the foot as many times as it wants. Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and Oracle will gladly take over their business without skipping a beat.

    -2

  • Stopping support to competitors is reasonable (quite rude to give short notice), on the other hand, violating the GLP license is unacceptable. Red had has definitely lost my trust.

    -3
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