[CentOS] RHEL on The Pirate Bay, Mininova, etc

[Dag Wieers]

yOn Sun, 23 Mar 2008, Daniel de Kok wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 2:24 PM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:
>>  But they are not taking away any rights, you may distribute (the GPL
>>  portions) however you want.  You may use it however you want.  They are
>>  just charging for each copy.
>
> Yes. But we never disagreed on that. But if you retrieve a copy of
> GPL'ed software from RHN, you are allowed to redistribute it according
> the terms of the GPL.

Right, and because of that I think it is perfectly technically possible to 
redistribute the existing binaries with the Red Hat trademark removed. 
That would be almost the same as what CentOS is doing, except that you 
have exactly the same binaries and libraries.

(However, for some packages that is going to be very hard to do)

The GPL allows that, but Red Hat can break your contract to retrieve these 
binary updates in the future, so you are kinda stuck.

FWIW if you are in a position that you need RHEL (and CentOS is not a 
replacement) then you most likely also need the support (read: fixing 
bugs) from Red Hat, or support from your application vendor, or a 
guaranteed certified OS. If all that is important, the price is not the 
problem.

Some of these points are being made in the business presentation on the 
wiki at:

 	http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Presentations

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at centos.org,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]