Ubuntu founder doesn't "get" enterprise Linux

[Evan Klitzke]

On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 11:57 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> You can't get a copy unless you buy a support contract and agree to only 
> install it on the covered machine, even though all of the GPL'd content 
> includes a clause that says additional restrictions can't be appled to 
> redistribution.

This is from the license agreement you sign when you buy a Redhat
contract:

With the exception of certain image files identified in Section 2 below,
the license terms for the components permit Client to copy, modify, and
redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms.
This agreement does not limit Client's rights under, or grant Client
rights that supersede, the license terms of any particular component.

So you are definitely free to distribute the binaries and source code
you receive from Redhat. But the RHN agreement that you sign also says
that you can only use binaries you get from RHN in certain ways, and if
you don't follow the terms you won't get more updates from RHN. It's
like when you buy a product from a store, and get a warranty. The
warranty says that if you do certain things, the warranty isn't valid
anymore. This doesn't mean that the warranty _prohibits_ you from doing
these things. Same thing with Redhat. You aren't prohibited, in a legal
sense, from redistributing the software you download from RHN. It's just
that Redhat won't give you any more updates if you do. Obviously this is
a little different with respect to trademarks and such, but this is the
general idea.

The license also doesn't say you can only install RHEL on one machine.
It says you get one license to use RHN, and you can only use the RHN
updates on one machine. Again, there's nothing from stopping you from
installing RHEL wherever you want as long as you don't use RHN without
paying Redhat for it.

Yeah, this is a kind of crappy policy that Redhat has. But it's a policy
that makes Redhat a lot of money, and consequently they can hire a lot
of good developers and make great products. Redhat, by a huge margin, is
the biggest contributor to open source projects, especially GNU projects
and in the kernel. They have also done really great things in the server
environment (e.g. the amazing amount of work they spend on SELinux).
Canonical basically repackages other people's software. The amount of
things that they have actually developed (I'm thinking of upstart and
bazaar) is really paltry compared to Redhat's contributions. So even
though I could get free updates from Canonical for their server
products, I really like Redhat because they contribute a lot more to the
community, and because I really feel like they value open source and the
GPL, especially evident through offerings like Fedora.

Just my two cents,
Evan Klitzke