[CentOS] Customizing Centos

Sat Jan 8 20:54:04 UTC 2011
Digimer <linux at alteeve.com>

On 01/08/2011 01:18 PM, derleader __ wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>    I want to ask you is it legal to create my own distribution based
> on Red
>>> Hat/Centos and to sell it under different name? I will make available for
>>> everyone to see the source code. Is this against the license agreement?
>>>
>>> regards
>>> Peter
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>
>>
>>
>>Yes, you can customize the distro as you see fit. Many projects do
>>this. But, you can't sell it.
> 
> I need to use customized Centos to host special software designed and
> written from me. Is it legal to sell my software with the operating system?
> 
> regards

A company I contract for does just this. They sell their software and a
support license for it. They offer an option to buy a pre-built server
with CentOS and their application already installer, or they will
provide an ISO for clients to install on their own machines.

In the end, you are selling your program, not the operating system.

To clarify; GPL allows for the software being sold for money. The trick
is that the source code *must* also be made available for free. So, any
modifications you make to GPL'ed software must in turn be re-released
under the terms of the GPL. You do not need to provide compiled
versions, mind you, but the source code itself must be made freely
available.

Now, if your application is totally yours and contains no GPL'ed (or
similarly licensed) code, they you can do whatever you want with it.



-- 
Digimer
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