[Fwd: Wikipidia - Goodbye Red Hat and Fedora]

Jeffrey Ollie jeff at ocjtech.us
Tue Oct 14 13:37:39 UTC 2008


On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 8:17 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 7:54 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> How does that clause "You may not impose any further restrictions on the
>>> recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein." mesh with the further
>>> restrictions that Red Hat imposes?  The GPL does not distinguish between
>>> binaries and source in the required terms.
>>
>> To which additional restrictions do you refer?

OK, so I'm not a lawyer, and I've never purchased a copy of RHEL, and
I don't work for Red Hat but:

> Can I buy one copy of a Red Hat package and redistribute it as the GPL
> permits for any GPL covered portion?

For certain you can redistribute the source for the GPL and other OSS
bits.  I'm less clear on whether the GPL allows you to redistribute
the binary code.  A quick re-reading of the GPLv2 left me confused as
to whether it was always talking about source code or it was talking
about source code + binaries.

> Or install on as many machines as I want?

I would say yes.  What you won't get is updates (at least not directly).

> Does every part that has any GPL component permit redistribution of
> the work-as-a-whole?

On that I have no idea.

Anyway, if all you want is RHEL without having to pay for support, why
not go for CentOS (or one of the other rebuilds)?

One thing to note is that Red Hat has some very F/OSS-savvy lawyers
around.  I would be very surprised to find out that Red Hat was
deliberately trying to "get around" the GPL.

-- 
Jeff Ollie

"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then
I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the
terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve
them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and
unfairness of the universe."

	-- Marcus to Franklin in Babylon 5: "A Late Delivery from Avalon"




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