On 25 Mar 2003 15:13:44 -0500, you wrote: >On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 14:44, Miloslav Trmac wrote: >> So, are these conclusions correct? >> * Customer is allowed to install RHEL on any number of machines >> he wants, but this constitutes a breach of Service agreement and >> results in paying a penalty if the customer is audited. >> * Customer is allowed to redistribute RHEL without any "consequences".
This depends on the underlying license of the software itself and not the Red Hat license. If the software says to accept whatever license the distributor offers then restribution would be illegal. However some of the sofware licenses (in particular the GPL) trump the RHEL licence. >> * Customer is allowed to install and use RHEL without ever accepting >> the Subscription Agreement, assuming he can get a copy. The source rpms for the AS are available for download. So in theory at least anyone can download, build the rpms, and distribute it. >I don't think these conclusions are quite accurate. The accurate >conclusions are more like: > >* Customer is allowed to install RHEL on as many machines as he has >subscriptions >* Customer is allowed to receive support from Red Hat for RHEL software >on as many machines as he has subscriptions >* Customer is allowed to get Red Hat certified erratas for RHEL software >on as many machines as he has subscriptions > >OR > >* Customer is allowed to install RHEL on any number of machines he wants >(sans Java) >* Because this is in breach of the service agreement, Customer is not >allowed to receive support from Red Hat The service agreement *cannot* remove rights the customer has under the sofware's license. If the software is under the GPL then no breach of the service agreement is possible because the service agreement itself would be invalid for putting restrictions on the redistribution of GPL'd software. >* Because this is in breach of the service agreement, Customer cannot >get Red Hat certified erratas If everything in RHEL was GPL's this would be false, because it would be a violation of the GPL. However as I mentioned in a previous message it all depends on the various license agreements and you would have to go through every one of them to determine whether the RHEL license is enforceable or not. >The focus in the license agreement appear to be focused on support and >Red Hat certified erratas, not on the CD itself. This makes sense from >an Open Source/Free Software standpoint, and is not in contradiction of >the GPL. However a Red Hat certified errata kernel is still GPL'd, and thus cannot be restricted. >If you have 100 cars, is it really fair to only buy insurance on one of >them and expect that the insurance company will pay you if any of them >get into an accident? No. Bad analogy. Erratas are not support that is specific to you (ie. you have not called Red Hat to get help with a bug) but rather are general updates to the product (ie. it is a software release and not a service). -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
