Re: Plea for a reasonable RHASv3 license option

[shane stixrud org]

On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, Stephen Smoogen wrote:

> No what is says is that they have to give you the source code and can 
> not limit you from distributing that source code further. 
> 
> I faintly remember a long flame war in the early 90's where people 
> bitched that the FSF didnt give out binaries for their applications for 
> various OS's. The theory was that the FSF clearly had access to those 
> machine because they sold the binaries on tapes, and that they tested 
> that the applications on XYZ OS so werent they breaking the GPL by not 
> giving out those binaries on the FTP site for everyone to get a hold 
> of.. Other than FSF giving out binary compilers for Solaris 2.1 gcc and 
> clearly explaining that they were only going to do that.. I dont 
> remember them doing so otherwise.
> 


I personally have no concern what so ever with redhat not providing 
binaries on their ftp/web site.. none at all.  What concerns me is that I 
have 3 cds full of GPL based software which I appear to have the right to 
use for 1 year (after paying 1.5k for it), at the end of this year I can 
either pay RedHat another 1.5k (or more if they raise the price) or 
reformat my server. This is just a suprise to me is all, I did not think 
such a usage restriction was possible with GPL based software.