[ale] Re: Red Hat scare tactics

[Fulton Green]

Not that I'd ever talk about anything besides Red Hat on this list ...

On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 06:03:29PM -0400, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
> On a related topic, has anyone looked at the forthcoming licensing from 
> RedHat?  They will no longer have freely downloadable ISOs.  The cheapest 
> desktop distribution from them will be $179 per system.  Which comes with RHN 
> updates, no support, no CD, no hardcopy manual.
> 
> I keep wondering what prevents someone from getting one license, then 
> capturing the RPMs from the update network and redistibuting them to multiple 
> systems.  RH seems to be trying to convince you that this is a no-no, but I 
> don't think they have a leg to stand on.

Check out this (now slightly outdated) link:
http://www.redhat.com/software/whichlinux.html

Talking about the RHEL part of the equation:
"The source code files can be downloaded by anyone, and you still have the
right to use the software after the license and services expire."

It's outdated because what they called "Red Hat Linux" in this context is
now known as "Fedora Core" ( http://Fedora.RedHat.com/ ).  For most of us
on the list that haven't caught Slack, apt-get, YaST, InstallDrake or
Portage fever (sorry if I left out your distro of choice), Fedora would be
the one to use, since it has 99.9% OSI-compliant licensing.

There are a few trademark restrictions on the Fedora-stamped graphics that
are, in essence, there to prevent a third-party vendor from changing up
the Fedora distro and still calling it "Fedora".  Otherwise, their ISOs
are freely available, with mirroring and BitTorrents encouraged.

(Slight sidebar: I'm using Fedora Core test2 w/some FreshRPMs add-ons.
It rocks.)

The RHEL WS, OTOH, has a maintenance lifecycle of 5 years, and comes with
some proprietary software such as a Java SDK and StarOffice, so I can see
why there are no ISOs for it.  And the system won't be anywhere near the
cutting-edgness of Fedora, so even if they offered it for free I
personally would be interested in it.  But IT managers looking to reroute
the "Microsoft tax" and having a system that's relatively safe and secure
might be interested in the WS option if it had a decent SLA.

But even so, $179's a little too much to pay for no hand-holding.  This
might be an opportunity for Sun's upcoming Mad Hatter Linux-based desktop.

As for the redistribution of RHEL binary RPMs, IANAL, but it may very well
be doable, to the extent that you aren't redistributing software that is
proprietary (such as Java), contains proprietary modules (if they chose
to bundle those into the kernel RPM), or contains Red Hat trademarks
(such as the "Shadowman" artwork).

Even if there was some GPL loophole that allowed RH to restrict binary
distribution, there's definitely nothing keeping you from taking the
SRPMs from the RHEL products and "rolling your own", as long as you don't
call it a "Red Hat" distro.  (Pink Tie Enterprise, anyone? :)

Hope that helps clear up the confusion.

And FWIW:

$ ypcat group | grep "^rhemploy::" | grep fgreen
$ ypcat group | grep "^rhcurstk::" | grep fgreen
$ 

P.S.  OpenBSD has some (admittedly less problematic) ISO issues as well:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq3.html#ISO