RedHat Advanced Server licensing?

Wed Oct 22 22:33:28 PDT 2003

Quoting Michael T. Halligan (michael at halligan.org):

> I was wondering if anybody has done anything with AS? 

Oh yeah.  RHEL 2.1 (formerly called RHAS 2.1) is just RH 7.2 with a few
tweaks, put in a box, and bundled with a support contract.

RHEL 3.0 (just out) seems to be RH9 with similar small tweaks, and is
published in similar bundles.

> I use it to run some of my internal servers.. The licensing was never
> clear.

If you get a chance to verify the licensing of all the constituent
packages, please let me know.  I haven't had time.

> It seems to me that everything in it is GPL...

Um, that's a big no, there:  Apache is Apache-licensed, the bsdutils are
BSD-licensed, XFree86 is MIT/X11-licensed, etc.  At least one component,
pine/pico, is under a proprietary licence that permits public
redistribution.  It's possible that at least one package's licence
doesn't permit that, but I haven't so far found any.

> ...and the extra features are just really tools for some of the redhat
> developed tools like tux, piranha, redhat cluster manager, etc.. All
> of the programs appear to be GPL though..

To the best of my knowledge, every piece of software issued by RH, Inc.
(except for some proprietary tools issued by the former Cygnus division)
have always been issued under GNU GPL v. 2.  However, that's a far cry
from the entire distribution being GPLed.  Obviously, it would not be, 
given the components from elsewhere known to be otherwise licensed.

> So it seems to me the only licensing issue is if I use it on other
> servers that aren't "licensed", I'm not breaking licensing terms, it's
> just not supported.  

The above is a bit fuzzy.  Possible encumbrances are as follows:

o  Copyright - subject to checking of the individual packages, as noted
o  Trademark - definitely has these.  See: 
               http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/trademark-law
o  Patents - believed not to apply in this case
o  Contract - definitely an issue as to the company purchasing RHEL.  See:
              http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/rhel-isos
o  Trade secret - not bloody likely in this case, but listed for completeness.

Main points about RHEL, in my view, are at the two URLs above.  Beware
of obligations under the support contract (which automatically renews).

-- 
Cheers,           find / -user your -name base -print | xargs chown us:us
Rick Moen
rick at linuxmafia.com