Fedora and the System Administrator

[Peter Boy]

Am Fre, 2003-10-03 um 03.43 schrieb Bill Anderson:
> On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 19:34, Miguel M wrote:
> > Erik Williamson wrote 2003-10-02
> > 
> > >I inquired about what would happen if one was to (after one year) simply 
> > >get the SRPMS that are released as updates, compile and redistribute to 
> > >existing machines... but that's a no-no.
> > 
> > And what would happen if (after one year) one downloads
> > the update SRPMS to existing machines and compiles
> > independently the same packages in everyone of them?

I'm a little bit puzzled about that long lasting discussion here. The
GPL is intended to protect freedom of information about software and
software technologies, it is intended to protect free access to those
technologies. But the GPL is not intended to protect someone, who lets
others work hard and spend a lot of money (here: RH's enterprise
version), picking up that work for his own profit only. The GPL may not
forbid such an behaviour (in favour to protect freedom) but it's not the
intended course of action in general.

And that discussion will not resolve the causes for this discussion.
Nobody would discuss recompiling and redistribution of the RHEL SRPMS to
that extent if there wouldn't be that gap between Fedora and the
enterprise line (in terms of period of time for maintenance, stability
and time) which lets small and medium businisses staying in the dust (or
at least they feel so). Maybe the discussion is needed to convince
people at Red Hat that the gap does really existst.


Peter




> 
> It doesn't matter either way. The SRPMS are covered by the GPL. The
> SRPMS are available on the ftpsite. The RHN/Service you pay for is
> support service and access to *binaries* of the updates. There is
> nothing RH can do if you download a SRPM of a GPLed program and then put
> it on other machines, built or not.