[CentOS] Vote For CentOS :)

Thu Jun 2 18:19:37 UTC 2005
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On Thursday 02 June 2005 12:46, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 11:07, Lamar Owen wrote:
> > On Thursday 02 June 2005 10:48, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > > If your favorite choice is accepting a contract that imposes limits on
> > > where you can install free software

> > RHEL's SLA does not in any way impose restrictions on where you can
> > install anything.

> So a contract doesn't 'impose restrictions' because you could accept the
> penalty of breaking the contract if you wanted?  If you look at it that
> way, what could possibly impose a restriction?

If you break the Red Hat contract, Red Hat cannot remove your right to 
continue to run the RHEL servers you have already installed;  they just 
simply would refuse your login to RHN to fetch updates.  So you lose updates;  
this is one reason to buy RHEL in the first place, making it nice to follow 
the terms of the RHN SLA.  RHN!=RHEL.  So you could word it like: "So, if you 
want to continue to use the Red Hat Network to retrieve updates, you may only 
have the number of RHEL installations for which you have purchased RHN 
entitlements.  If you install RHEL to more machines than which you have 
entitlements, you lose your access to RHN for any machines entitled."  But 
this does not restrict your right to the code in the kernel, gcc, or other 
GPL licensed software inside the distribution, or for that matter does not 
restrict the right for you to take that software (other than the RH 
trademarks) and redistribute it in part or total (as long as you are happy to 
lose all your entitlements to RHN, but losing RHN entitlements does not mean 
you have to return your CD's or uninstall RHEL from all your servers).  

But remember, there are other licenses present in RHEL:  apache, X, 
PostgreSQL, Perl, among others are not GPL.  The RHEL artwork is not freely 
redistributable, for instance.  Red Hat didn't go the SuSE route though and 
not freely license their installer; Anaconda is GPL, but YaST was not, thus 
you couldn't even do with SuSE what is being done now with RHEL.

As a great example, PostgreSQL is a BSD-licensed package.  Red Hat has made 
significant contributions to the PostgreSQL community (one by providing 
full-time PostgreSQL employment for Tom Lane, a Core PostgreSQL developer, 
two by paying for several enhancements and backported bugfixes): Red Hat is 
not required by the terms of the BSD license to return ANYTHING to the 
PostgreSQL community, nor are they required to make their version of 
PostgreSQL, Red Hat Database (now known as PostgreSQL, Red Hat Edition) 
source code available to anyone.  But they did make it available.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu