[CentOS] using Red Hat site for documentation

Adrian Buciuman

adibuciuman at gmail.com
Wed Jul 30 13:38:06 UTC 2014


Hi,

Is using Red Hat site for documentation legal?

If I understand correctly you have to be a customer of Red Hat to be
allowed to use their bandwidth:
https://access.redhat.com/help/terms/

"2. Terms Applicable to Red Hat Content. In order to access a Red Hat
Portal and Red Hat Content, you must be a current Customer of Red Hat
or its affiliates
[.......]
 "Some Red Hat Content may have additional terms, license agreements,
privacy terms, export terms, subscription agreements, or other terms
and conditions ("Additional Terms") that apply to your access to or
use of the applicable Red Hat Content. In the event of a conflict,
inconsistency, or difference between these Terms of Use and the
Additional Terms, the Additional Terms will control.
[........]
6. Use of Content. Red Hat grants you a personal, non-assignable
license to use Red Hat Content for your own internal use while you are
a Red Hat Customer (as defined in Section 2 above). Distributing any
portion of Red Hat Content to a third party, using any Red Hat Content
for the benefit of a third party, or using Red Hat Content in
connection with software other than Red Hat Software under an active
Red Hat subscription are all prohibited. Red Hat authorizes you to
display on your computer, download, play, and print the Red Hat
Content provided: (a) the copyright notice is not removed, (b) Red Hat
Content is not be altered, (c) Red Hat Content is used only for your
personal, educational, and non-commercial use in support of your
active valid subscriptions to Red Hat products and services and in
accordance with your Customer Agreement, (d) you do not further
redistribute or copy Red Hat Content, and (e) you comply with any
Additional Terms. In the event of a conflict, inconsistency, or
difference between this Section 6 and the terms of a License or
Customer Agreement, the License or Customer Agreement will control
(for example, for Red Hat Content licensed under a Creative Commons
License, you will have the rights set forth in the applicable Creative
Commons License)."

---------------------------

The way I understand it, most RHEL documentation has a more permissive
license, like CC-BY-SA: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
and can be redistributed under certain conditions.
However, the terms of use still apply to using the Red Hat websites
(=bandwidth).

But if someone is a Red Hat customer, he can legally access the site,
fetch the documentation and redistribute it to everyone.

Since RHEL and CentOS are now collaborating, can they sort out this issue?

Thanks,

Adrian Buciuman



More information about the CentOS mailing list