[ale] Re: Red Hat scare tactics

[Greg]

Yeah, but OpenBSD is a project of Theo & co. - not a business.  OpenBSD is
fine if no one but a few used it or we all did.  RH on the other hand has a
payroll and such to make.

Installing OpenBSD by ftp has done well by me for those times when I
couldn't get a CD-ROM to work. The boot floppy is all that is needed - or
you can ftp them off of a local server or off of the downloaded .tgz's.
Some on the web have make their own ISO's too.

hmmm, things are looking bad for RH - hopefully they will get better.

Greg

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org]On Behalf Of
> Fulton Green
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 8:45 PM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: [ale] Re: Red Hat scare tactics
>
>
> 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 Check out this (now slightly outdated) link: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 It's outdated because what they called "Red Hat Linux" in this context is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
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