Karanbir Singh wrote:
>
>> We develop and sell a server based application as an appliance in
>> which, in general, the customer does not have direct access to the
>> operating system. My question is, are we allowed to use CentOS as the
>> underlying operating system and if so what licence considerations are
>> there or what licence information would we need to include for our
>> customers?
>
> CentOS as a distribution is shipped under the GPL license.
Which means you need to either give source or a written offer to supply
it on demand for 3 years.
> So your app
> would need to comply with and be compatible with the GPL license and all
> the issues that come with that.
Programs that are 'aggregated' by inclusion on the same media aren't
necessarily affected by the OS license. The GPL requirements are only
inherited if your application is derived from a GPL work, as for
example, by including libraries covered by the GPL (and most, but not
all have the more liberal LGPL, so you have to check this carefully
whether you supply the OS or not).
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com