Look, everybody is entitled to their opinion and I respect yours. I have posted enough that it is just going to look combative and so I think this will be the last one. That said, this feels like the kind of “then why don’t we just allow murder” straw man that gets used when we want to argue emotions instead of facts. Yes, breaking your arm sounds very unfair. Is that a good analogy?

I think a much better analogy would be me signing an employment agreement that places restrictions on my freedoms that I otherwise have as a citizen of my country. Who cares what restrictions. Maybe I cannot drink at work. Maybe I cannot travel to certain countries. Maybe I cannot play video games on the work computer ( even at home ). Maybe I am not allowed to express certain political or religious views with customers. Or maybe there is a public article showing that all our competitors are better than us and I am not allowed to tell customers about that article. Let’s take that last one and assume I am American ( I am not but we need a legal framework we may all know ).

Has my company taken away my 1st amendment right to free speech? If I say something they do not like, they will take away my job and all the income I wanted from it in the future. Is that fair and ethical? It certainly hurts me. How is that not massively illegal under the US constitution? Surely employment law is less important than the constitution. How is it morally ok and not totally against “the spirit” of a free society?

Well, I have not lost any rights. I remain free to say what I want. However, there can be consequences. In this case, they are consequences that I have contractually agreed to. The First Amendment and my Employment Contract are not the same thing and they grant me different rights and impose different obligations. I am free to share the damaging article but, if I do, my employer will stop paying me.

Free Speech Absolutionists may insist that I not be fired for acting against the interests of my employer. Most of the rest of us understand that this os ok as we have to balance the interests of all parties of we want a system that works well overall. We also understand that no rights have been lost.

I see this as very much like that. Red Hat is not adding any new restrictions to the copyright license and, as such, they are granting you full rights as per that license. Legally, Red Hat is granting you the right to redistribute their code when they give you code licensed under the GPL. Simultaneously, they ask me to agree to a subscription agreement ( like an employer asks me to agree to an Employment Agreement ). The subscription agreement outlines what Red Hat will do for me and what I must agree to do in return. I do not have to agree to the subscription agreement. I can CHOOSE to because it offers something I want. In doing so, I may have agreed to some constraints on my otherwise fundamental rights or more general legal agreements.

So, I do not think Red Hat is threatening to break your arm. They do not harm you in any way other than to stop doing nice things for you in the future.

What I see in the reaction to Red Hat is a bunch of people that think they should be able to break their employment contracts but still keep getting paycheques from their employer.

If we still disagree, that is fine. I think this post fairly explains my position.