Johnny Hughes wrote:
>
>>> And in this case, the precedents of hundreds years of contractual law
>>> would have to be overturned. The GPL license covers source code
>>> access. The RHEL license covers binary access without restricting your
>>> rights towards source code.
>>
>> I don't recall any distinction between what you can do with binaries
>> and source mentioned in the GPL beyond the requirement that sources
>> must be made available too. And section 6 (of GPLv2) states explictly
>> that "You may not impose any further restrictions...". Of course not
>> all of RHEL is covered by the GPL.
>>
>
> They are not imposing any restrictions on the software ... you have
> signed an agreement that as long as you are entitled to get updates from
> RHN that you will not do those things (it is an if/then statement).
But those things involve restrictions on the software.
> It
> is a contract, no one is forcing you to sign it. If you do sign it,
> then you are obligated to to meet the requirements in it.
>
> If you don't like the conditions, then cancel the subscription and you
> can use their software without updates.
It's not a matter of liking it or not, I just don't understand how
someone can distribute software with a license that says as a condition
of redistribution you can't impose further restrictions along with a
required contract that imposes further restrictions - regardless of a
tie-in with a subscription.
> Red Hat is a great open source company, it is because of the way they
> distribute their source code that CentOS can exist.
No argument there, but restrictions are restrictions.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com