doughnuts on a fish hook

[Steve Bergman]

So, the restriction is possible because we are talking about the binary
distribution.  There is nothing to keep someone from creating RPM's from
the SRPM's on a single RHEL box, and making a set of install ISO's. 
Except that the result:

1. Would not necessarily be exactly the well tested product that RedHat
offers, since different compilers and compiler options may have been
used for particular packages.

2. Would not have a support contract associated with it.

Consequently, all of the added value that RedHat provides would be lost,
and the RHLP distro would still be the one with all the "cool" new
stuff.

Except for the long term availability of errata...  And this is a sore
point with me.  Why can't I purchase extended errata availability for
the non-RHEL RedHat distro?  I did ask, once, on the support or sales
line, I can't remember which, and was told that it could be bought for
*about* 35,000 USD a year, "because we would be doing it just for you".
To be honest, it may have been 3,500 USD, but it was a sum that would
have had my small clients clamoring for a Windows(tm) "solution".

It seems like there should be a market for errata, which is a service,
after all, at a reasonable price, for more than a year.

Let me be clear on this.  I think that RedHat has done so many things
"right" that it really boggles the mind.  What am I missing?





On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 16:59, Jay Turner wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 03:49:58PM -0500, Steve Bergman wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 10:44, Troy Dawson wrote:
> > >   Buying the Enterprise stuff is not an option.
> > 
> > I guess this is as good a place as any to ask this question.
> > 
> > RHEL comes, necessarily, with a support agreement.  The support
> > agreement is good for 1 machine. That much is clear.
> > 
> > But what if you buy, say, 1 copy for every 10 machines and designate
> > ahead of time which machines get the support contracts, and which are
> > unsupported.  Is this legit?
> 
> The licensing for the next release of RHEL isn't set in stone yet, so I'll
> answer respective to the RHEL 2.1 license.  Under that license, you would
> need a license for every machine that you have RHEL installed on.  So, no,
> you wouldn't be able to purchase one copy ofr every 10 machines.
> 
> > 
> > Also, is it then legit to download security patches from RHN and install
> > them on all the machines?
> 
> Here's one I can answer a lot better.  All of the code which makes up the
> core of RHEL is licensed under the GPL (and other similar licenses.)
> Therefore, you can indeed download the security errata from RHN, then push
> it out to any machines that you would like.
> 
> - jkt