Policy Question & Noise Level

[Mike A. Harris]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, Chuck Talk wrote:

>I am trying to find out about how Fedora will be released. I.E.,
>if I wished to release CD's of the Fedora Project, Could I do so
>under another name without infrigning on anyone's rights?

Short answer: Yes.

>In other words, I may wish to have burned CD's available of the
>Source and Binaries, but not call it Fedora, so that people can
>order the same for a small fee. Is this feasibale under the
>Fedora Project, or will this be considered an infringement of
>the rights of the developers and contributors?

If you're redistributing Fedora unmodified, if I recall
correctly, our trademark guidelines permit this.  You'll have to
read the guidelines on the website yourself to be sure though.

Also, if you're re-rolling Fedora as your own distribution with
possible changes, you can charge whatever you like for the 
results as it is effectively your own distribution - as long as 
Red Hat trademarks are removed.  Again, you can clarify this by 
reading our trademark policies on the Fedora site and main Red 
Hat website.


>The last thing I want to do is make people upset. I merely want
>to enable those without a broadband connection or patience to be
>able to order a CD or DVD set without the hassle of the big
>download. Also, can documentation then be built for same and
>charged for, or would that be considered a violation of Red
>Hat's rights? Also, how do developers who contribute feel about
>that? Is it a problem, or is it expected that others will
>deliver CDs and DVDs?

Red Hat is only concerned about protecting it's trademarks.  The 
software is all OSS software and freely distributable, thus 
allowing anyone to modify it, and redistribute the results, 
including using Fedora as the basis of their own distribution.  
There should be no problem redistributing CDs/DVDs based on 
a modified Fedora, as long as the Fedora name and trademarks are 
not used.  Again though I defer to the published trademark 
guidelines for complete details.


>I am not trying to cash in on this, I am jusy trying to come up
>with a way to start a fund for the Corporation for Public
>Software by providing a service first. Getting that off the
>ground is still a long-term goal for me.

You can try to cash in on it if you want to though.  As long as 
you're following the trademark guidelines, there are really no 
problems.  It's all OSS software.  ;o)  Nobody has any right to 
be upset with you if you're not violating any trademarks or 
licenses, etc.


>Due to the noise level of the list, I would ask that responses
>please come direct to me as this is not a development question,
>but a delivery question. I am not sure that is appropriate for
>the list (maybe it is, but I am not certain, and I don't want to
>take away from the development discussions).

I think it is very relevant to the list personally.  There are 
other people who probably want to do the same thing, or are at 
least interested in answering the results.


>My email (intended for human eyes and comprehension): ctalk at
>austin dot rr dot com.

I'm not sure why people try to hide their email address in this 
fashion.  Your real email address is in the mail headers, and any 
address harvesting software can just pull it from the headers.  
Of course that could only happen if some harvester subscribed to 
the list addresses, or got it from web available archives that 
don't munge addresses.    ;o)

Hope this answers your questions about redistribution.  Take 
care!

TTYL

-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat