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

Fri Apr 29 18:56:05 UTC 2011
NOYK <service.account at insightbb.com>

Given the difficulty of getting Centos 6 released - maybe this is not the
correct group to ask. Just saying. ;)

-----Original Message-----
From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf
Of Paul Johnson
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 12:17 PM
To: CentOS mailing list
Subject: [CentOS] I have RHel6. How does that turn into Centos 6?

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.


PJ
--
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas
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