What happened with Fedora - and Red Hat too [LWN.net]

What happened with Fedora - and Red Hat too

Posted Aug 25, 2008 1:37 UTC (Mon) by duffy (subscriber, #31787)
In reply to: What happened with Fedora - and Red Hat too by tialaramex
Parent article: What happened with Fedora - and Red Hat too

Your statement about Red Hat subscribers having the ability to copy RHEL content ad-nauseum without corresponding subscriptions in place for each copy is actually incorrect. The rules that govern a subscription agreement with Red Hat are different than the rules that govern someone who somehow has a copy of Red Hat binaries yet does not have any subscription agreements with Red Hat. I believe the rules are such that you pay for all or none; you can't just pay for some and be in compliance with your subscription agreement.

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What happened with Fedora - and Red Hat too

Posted Aug 26, 2008 12:01 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

That's mostly true, but I don't think it contradicts what I wrote (or at least, it doesn't contradict what I meant). Let's take an easy example, GCC. GCC is a GPL'd package, so Red Hat can't forbid you from uploading their GCC RPM to ftp.example.com and telling other people that's where to get it.

You're correct that this doesn't entitle you, a Red Hat subscriber with say a single machine subscription, to install the packages on a dozen machines and then get support on them all. But it's the subscription agreement you're violating, ie Red Hat are entitled to withdraw all support until you pay for the extra eleven machines, but they are not entitled to force you to stop using or distributing the software since that would exceed their rights as distributors under the GNU GPL.

This is an important reason why RHEL subscription is a better option for corporate entities than Microsoft's equivalent. The Microsoft subscriptions terminate your license to use on expiry of the subscription, but Red Hat don't (for most of the components of RHEL they can't even if they wanted to) do that. All that expires is the support contract. If you find another organisation willing to support your systems you can switch, with no penalty.