[CentOS] [OT] RedHat's licence, CentOS rebuild

Fri Aug 18 21:08:55 UTC 2006
danieldk at pobox.com <danieldk at pobox.com>

Hi,

> Is redhat forced to release the sources of its product?

Obviously, that depends on the license. The GPL has specific requirements
for providing the source when a user get/purchases a binary. But this does
not apply to software that fall under some other licenses (most notably,
the MIT and BSD licenses).

> Is redhat's sources released by its kindness or because there is some
> legal document that enforced that.

As for GPL-ed (and probably some other) software, it is enforced by the
license. Though Red Hat has been very kind to the GNU/Linux community, in
contrast to some other distributors they make it easy to get the source.
They also contribute a lot of manpower.

> I'll really appreciate your comments about this, feel like I am in a
> neuronal crusade with this topic.

Some general note: the relationship between the upstream provider and
CentOS does not worry me too much. I think that in the very unlikely even
that CentOS would not be able to track the upstream provider, it will have
enough momentum to continue on its own feet. The CentOS team is very
knowledgable and dedicated (thanks guys).

-- Daniel