The more I read the confuser I get.-the answer

[Ben Russo]

Aaron Konstam wrote:

>On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 09:39:33AM -0600, Aaron Konstam wrote:
>  
>
>>I will make it simple. If you by a RH Enterprise distribution or RH Workstation
>>distribution can you install it freely on multiple machines or do you have to pay
>>for each installation? Or is the service for the installation only good on one
>>machine but the software can be installed on multiple machines?
>>-- 
>>    
>>
>I got the answers to my questions. I went to the horses mouth. RedHat
>said:
>If you buy one Enterprise system or Workstation system and put it on
>other machines you have the following three restrictions:
>1. You can not update the other machines through binary updating. If
>they find someone rampantly distributing their licenced updates to
>unlcensed machines, they intend to take legal action.
>
>2. You have to remove all references to the redhat name from the
>unlicenced machines.
>
>3. Their is a propritery IBM package included which will have to be
>removed.
>
>If anyone on from RedHat on the list disaggrees with this analysis of
>RedHat's position I owuld be interested in hearing from them.
>  
>
This is basically the same answer that I got.
RedHat says that they are selling their RHN subscription,
    the software on the CD's is GPL'd (except for the redhat logos and 
the IBM Java stuff)

They don't give away CD's and you can't download them.
RedHat doesn't allow free downloads of the Binary RPM's either, you have 
to pay for the
RHN subscription.

However, all the source RPM's are available, and if you want to use 
anaconda to
build your own installer distro (you remove the IBM java pkg's and the 
redhat-logo's)

You can then maintain your own RPM repository which contains binary 
packages
that you will have to build from source.  It isn't hard to do, just a 
little time consuming.
And of course there is no */Guarantee/* that RedHat will continue to 
make SRPMs
available to freeloaders.  The GPL doesn't require them to provide 
SRPM's to people
to whom RedHat has not given binaries.

However, if I have one RHN subscription, there is nothing to stop me 
from using the
SRPM'd packages I download in the way the GPL intends.

I think this is very fair.  I just wish RedHat would work with me to get 
a bulk discount.
I mean if I want to buy 25 or 50 licenses.  I'd rather pay a reasonable 
amount for
RHN access than maintain this myself.

The reasoning I have is....
    If i am going to maintain lot's of servers it becomes more and more 
efficient for
       me to support my own repository of built RPM's.  So my incentive 
to pay for RHN
       access becomes lower.
    Also, I could set up a caching
       proxy server for the RHN site (use no ssl)  and then it wouldn't 
cost RedHat
       any more bandwidth or CPU time to service my network of 25-30 
machines than
        it costs them to service my 4 (currently) licensed boxes.
    I would be willing to pay $100 or $200 per year for RHN access for 
each box.
       but not $800/yr.