On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 15:52, Gerald Henriksen wrote: > >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.
You are correct that the service agreement cannot remove rights the customer is granted from the software's license agreements. However there is no right to support from Red Hat. If they want to say you can only receive support if you are wearing purple socks, sitting in an Aeron, and are running Red Hat certified hardware, that is their prerogative. > >* 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. The GPL does not require a vendor to give the software away to anyone who asks. It also does not require a vendor to provide updates to the software. If Red Hat only wants to directly provide updates to paying customers, then they can. Those customers can then redistribute the updates, assuming they are under the GPL, but would then be in breach of the services agreement and would not be allowed to get further updates directly from Red Hat. > >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). Erratas are part of support and maintenance, which is specific to you. Red Hat is not obliged to provide updates/erratas to anyone. If you have 100 servers and wish to receive support in case any one of them dies, then you should have to pay for support for all of them. Erratas are no different, they are just a different type of support. You are welcome to build your own sendmail, openssl, or glibc packages when security updates come out, but then they won't be certified by Red Hat, and may not work with some software. You are paying for the Red Hat certification of the errata, not the code in it. If you were paying for the code, then it wouldn't make any sense to publicly distribute the SRPMs on ftp.redhat.com. Thanks. Peter -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
