[ale] Re: Red Hat scare tactics

[Chris Ricker]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Christopher Fowler wrote:

> of the total ISO to meet certain RH license guidelines.  Sure
> you should be able to freely download the openssh.XXXX.rpm but
> not be able to download the RH installer.  That would be code owned
> by RH and not fall under the GPL. Unless they were stupid enough to
> place their "glue" under the GPL. The packages are free the glue
> you have to pay for.  That is the value that novice users get when
> the pay for the ISO images.  You and I can build our own linux
> system from the ground up so we do not need their glue.

Nope. RH is open. Even the RH installer is GPL'ed. That's why Mandrake was
able to take it, s/Red Hat/Mandrake/g, and release their product (and later
Sun Linux did the same, and others). It's one of the reasons customers
choose RH -- it's not a proprietary product, and they get the right to
extend and customize the installer as necessary, and then to redistribute
that (and many do exactly that). That's different than the other commercial
Linux distros, which are proprietary. SuSE, for example, does what you
suggest and keeps their installer code closed.

later,
chris