[CentOS] I have RHel6. How does that turn into Centos 6?

Fri Apr 29 17:26:35 UTC 2011
Todd Rinaldo <toddr at cpanel.net>

On Apr 29, 2011, at 11:43 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:

> On 04/29/2011 11:17 AM, Paul Johnson wrote:
>> The bickering here about Centos 6 has made me wonder what is actually
>> legally necessary to re-distribute the RPM files that come with RHel6.
>> 
>> I am not starting a flame ware, I hope.  I'm just curious about what
>> is minimally necessary go from RHel6 to another distribution. I
>> suppose we could discuss "Paul Linux 6" instead of Centos, if that
>> makes you feel more comfortable. (and not too OT)
>> 
>> Suppose I dump out all of the SRPM packages and do a global find and
>> search to change the characters "RedHat" to "Paul".  What else would I
>> have to do?
>> 
>> Which of the RPM files in RH6 have "proprietary" software in them?
>> Those cannot be re-distributed as is? I figure there must be
>> something, because I installed the test version of SL6 back in January
>> and it locked up in disk recognition, whereas RH6 did not. So the Rhel
>> 6 folks know some secrets stuff.
>> 
>> So, obviously, to create Centos 6, oops, Paul Linux 6,  I have to
>> isolate the non-GPL software and then replace it with something
>> workable.
>> 
>> After that, what am I legally required to do?  As far as all of the
>> other RPM packages are concerned, couldn't they be redistributed
>> exactly as they are, without any modification at all? In Centos-devel,
>> it appears to me most of the discussion is about "re-branding", going
>> through the packages and changing "RedHat" to "Centos" and swapping
>> out icons.
>> 
>> Is that legally necessary?  In my memory, there was a Linux distro
>> called Mandrake and it was exactly the same as RH for i386, except
>> they re-compiled with gcc options for i686.  I recall that in many of
>> the RPM packages in Mandrake, they did not bother to replace "RedHat"
>> with some other name.
> 
> This is not the PAUL Linux mailing list.  It is the CentOS mailing list.
> 
> The CentOS project will not redistribute files signed by Red Hat, and we
> will not sign files that we do not create.  Simple as that.
> 
> You also must make a "good faith effort" to not distribute any branding
> that makes your version of Linux tell people that it is Red Hat Linux or
> Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I've always been surprised that CentOS ships /etc/redhat-release given the above paragraph.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20110429/3973ebe8/attachment-0005.html>