It is in the spirit, and here it is straight from the horse's mouth:
> Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
> Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
It's all well and good that RH follows the legal requirements of the GPL by providing the sources to their customers. All above board there.
The problem is that, as a downstream customer of that software, RH threatens to terminate my business contract with them if I exercise my own freedom to redistribute that software. It's completely in bad faith.
Yeah, Red Hat is free to terminate their business with you. And you are free to get that software from somewhere else. To quote again from the Selling Free Software article (linked above):
> With free software, users don't have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of a friend who has network access. Or several users can join together, split the price of one CD-ROM, then each in turn can install the software. A high CD-ROM price is not a major obstacle when the software is free.
And so all these arguments, once all the misinformation is expelled, eventually boil down to this "it's in bad faith" schtick. Well, what is the faith of Rocky Linux when they are purveying a bug-for-bug clone of RHEL, selling support contracts on top of that, and directly competing with Red Hat's business?
Trick question, because "faith" doesn't matter. It's all legal, and these are businesses. They are making business decisions. If one thinks that some corporation--any corporation--owes "faith" or loyalty to their customers, then I got a bridge to sell you.
You're free to hate Red Hat--no one is forcing anyone to _like_ them--but I hope you have some substance somewhere within, and can articulate why.
>f one thinks that some corporation--any corporation--owes "faith" or loyalty to their customers
If you don't think it is well past time to start forcing ethical behaviour on corporations... I don't know what to say to you.
I notice a certain country is fast tracking them to have human rights, like civic voting, but nothing at all about joining in responsible stewardship for our world.
