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