[CentOS-devel] First round of RHEL programs announced

Mon Jan 25 15:40:54 UTC 2021
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On 1/24/21 12:28 PM, redbaronbrowser via CentOS-devel wrote:
> I see it as damaging to Red Hat in the long run sending the message 
> that GPL/LGPL rights respected by CentOS should be disregarded by 
> users when agreeing to the "better" 16 RHEL licenses. The attitude of 
> Red Hat should not be that people will continue to contribute to free 
> software projects regardless of how RH uses the term "unentitled." 

They have been straddling this fence since RHEL was first made, and, to 
the best of my knowledge, the RHEL subscription contract has not been 
tested in court (I've not combed PACER for it, though). Someone would 
have to violate their contract AND then have their subscription revoked 
due to breach of contract AND then sue Red Hat for the subscription 
termination.  This would be a long, involved, and costly process.  And 
this is the only way to really settle the issue of whether GPL prohibits 
restrictions on the redistribution of object code derivative works.

Back to the word you took exception to; in RHEL-speak, 'unentitled' 
means a server that doesn't have an 'entitlement' through 
subscription-manager.  It doesn't refer to third-parties, but to the 
second party's server.  That was the context for the use of the word, 
that of a server using the binary RPMs for mock buildroots but run by 
someone with a subscription.  At least that was my understanding of the 
word given the context.