On Fri, 2006-08-18 at 15:38 -0400, Alain Reguera wrote:
Hello,
I've been talking with some friends about the Redhat's SRPMs release issue. I've been reading the trademarks and some points of GPL. But get some confusion around the questions:
Is redhat forced to release the sources of its product?
RedHat choose to use and release GPL code and a requirement of that is the making available of the source code. RedHat are good in this regard and do this willingly with no great fuss.
Is redhat forced, due GPL licence, to make the sources of its product available to others (including those who don't buy the distro), and permit changes whenever the trademark guidelines were respected?
There is some legal arguments that force the redhat's sources to be released.
Is redhat's sources released by its kindness or because there is some legal document that enforced that.
See answer above.
In a past post, I read that even if redhat close the distro, it has to release the sources to the client how buy the distro, so he/she would rebuild it and release a new one based on it as totally free. So, will CentOS have to buy the redhat distro to rebuild it and release it for free to the community in a close case ?
A requirement of the GPL is to provide the source upon request - no matter who requests it. As I stated previously, RedHat are good in this regard and do this willingly with no great fuss placing it on their ftp making requests unnecessary.
Have we some guarantee that redhat will not close the srpms and the rebuilding will be safe ?.
RedHat have always publicly stated its support for Open Source and the freedom it provides. Hopefully no future events make them evaluate their position.
What does CentOS mean with: CentOS has no relationship with Red Hat(r), Inc. or RHEL.
Johnny would be best to answer this one.
However, I think you want to know if CentOS has any form of relationship with RedHat Inc. - That would be a no.
What happen with those countries that are not allowed to use redhat, can they use CentOS ? does redhat want this ? is this permitted by some legal argument.
This one is for a person in a specific country to check out for themselves. RHEL and CentOS and separate entities and must be regarded as this when checking against any individual countries laws for download and usage.
I'll really appreciate your comments about this, feel like I am in a neuronal crusade with this topic.
my Regards to you and your Time Al.
Regards
Phil