Re: Redhat licensing

[Steinar Skjelanger <steinar skjelanger com>]

At 13:11 18.06.2004 -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:

> Except for one small thing.  Jay, while he is a Red Hat employee, is not
> a lawyer, and cannot speak for Red Hat's legal department.  Taking his
> word, and putting it forth as the gospel is _not_ the right thing to
> do, and will most likely drive any other Red Hat fellow away from ever
> posting anything to a public mailing list.  Jay offered his opinion,
> nothing more.

The problem is that everyone seem to refuse to say anything substantial in 
case they might end up defending it in court, and we end up with a 
situation where the only way to get a straight answer is to line up an army 
of lawyers and drag it through the court system.

I can't believe that Red Hat saying something to the effect of "We want our 
customers to pay for each and every installation of RHEL they have, no 
exceptions, as long as they are under a support contract with us" would 
hurt anyone, since that is what the EULA really says. Combined with a 
disclaimer stating that in case of any inconsistencies between this 
statement and the EULA, the EULA takes precendence, it should be pretty 
safe, right? And I can't for the life of me understand why Red Hat would 
want to obfuscate this.

I know I can't use it in court. Then again, I don't intend to go to court, 
nor do I want to. I just want to know what the EULA really means - 
specifically what _Red Hat_ intended it to mean when they wrote it. That's 
why I found Jays posting refreshing, as it didn't try (like so many others) 
to avoid the answer, but gave a crisp clear view of Red Hats intentions 
with the RHEL EULA. No lawyer can give me that answer, only Red Hat can. 
Given that what he said is actually correct, why can't Red Hat put it on 
their front page for everyone to see?

Regards,

Steinar Skjelanger