can I sell fedora?

[Joel]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 05:31:55 -0700 (PDT)
dyzelinis <dyzelinis at yahoo.com> wrote

> Yes, that is exactly to the point! I want my friend company to sell Fedora to
> me, and I will get tax refund, and I can share that refund with my friend. Our
> law says, that I will get tax refund, when I by new OS software. With Windows,
> SUSE and other comercial OS'es everything is fine, because someone sells the
> software and I can buy it. 
> 
> I want to know is it legal to sell Fedora per se. Can someone sell not only
> _the discs_ with Fedora, but the software per se? Are there any restriction
> that comes from RedHat? I need to buy Fedora like I buy Windows and I need that
> my friend could sell Fedora like he sells Windows. That is the main question.
> Is it legal for RedHat?

The point is, your government may decide to audit.

What you are talking about is going to look fishy to the auditor. It's
called a kick-back scheme in the US, and is illegal here. 

(It has nothing to do with GPL or any other Licensing from Red Hat.) 

How your government would treat it I have no idea. That's the gamble you
would be taking.

One thing, those who use Linux regularly would prefer you not involve
Linux in anything that could get you into trouble.

> By the way, in my coutry average salary per week is $100, so the amount of
> money we talk about is rather big :)

Since you are so interested in this, let me reiterate what others have
said:

Your friend can _not_ sell Linux. He can _not_ sell the right to use it
or distribute it.

He _can_ sell a CD with RedHat's Fedora Core ISOs burned on it for a
reasonable fee. The basis of the fee should be the cost of the CD, the
cost of the internet connection and time to download, and the cost of
the time of the person who did the work downloading.

However, RedHat's software must _not_ be modified.

Anyone who gets those CD(s) can use Linux freely and can even resell
them for a reasonable fee. But if the CDs are bad, anyone who has sold
those CDs has to provide another copy for free.

What would reasonable be? I would guess, if your friend added up his
costs, it would be less than USD 20. 

Your friend _can_ sell an install or support contract. But that obliges
him to actually provide the services sold.

Hopefully, you can figure out from the above what you should do. I (and
others here) strongly suggest you do not arrange with your friend to
take a kickback.

-- 
Joel <rees at ddcom.co.jp>