Revisiting an old topic: licensing/titlement and"redistribution"

[Sorin Srbu]

Ray Van Dolson <> scribbled on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 10:51 PM:

Make a distinction between the actual media and the entitlements. Or am I
misunderstanding you? Do you actually mean you have to download multiple
medias or whatever when installing (assuming same version on all machines)?

We only get entitlements for all systems (one per computer) and have several
different versions around.

This is getting to be a can of worms...


> On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 10:41:29PM +0100, Sorin Srbu wrote:
>> Ray Van Dolson <> scribbled on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 7:31 PM:
>> 
>> What you pay for is the patches and support you get over RHN. The media
>> alone is as I understand it GPLed. Kinda'. Confusing enough? 8-}
> 
> Thanks for the reply... my RH sales rep is telling me differently
> though.
> 
> They are trying to tell me that one set of "CD's" (installation media
> of whatever form) can only be used for one installation.
> 
> Or to put it another way, for each installation of RHEL we have, we
> should have a corresponding entitlement purchased at some point (even
> if it has expired).
> 
> I could see this perhaps if:
> 
>   - They don't allow redistribution of their compiled binaries as
>     provided on the CD's or in the ISO's
>   - There is some software that cannot be redistributed on the CD's.
>     In this case this software would need to be removed first negating
>     the ability to use the media to install to multiple machines
>     without an entitlement.
> 
> Maybe I need a RH Legal contact to clarify this.  It would be nice to
> know for _sure_. :)
> 
> Ray