[CentOS] [OT] RedHat's licence, CentOS rebuild

Fri Aug 18 19:38:43 UTC 2006
Alain Reguera <alain.reguera at gmail.com>

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?

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.

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 ?

Have we some guarantee that redhat will not close the srpms and the
rebuilding will be safe ?.

What does CentOS mean with: CentOS has no relationship with Red
Hat(r), Inc. or RHEL.

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.

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.