RHEL redistribution..

Sean seanlkml at sympatico.ca
Wed Feb 16 13:20:09 UTC 2005


On Wed, February 16, 2005 7:29 am, Rahul Sundaram said:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 11:21:19 +0000, WipeOut
>> I have a question that may or may not have come up before... Not wanting
>> to start a flame war but its something that I was asked and didn't have
>> an answer to..
>>
>> Is RHEL allowed to be freely distributed and installed on as many PC's
>> as you like as is the case with other GPL distro's??
>
> the code is licensed under various open source license.  so yes the
> code is freely redistributable. redhat has trademark restrictions so
> anyone redistributing it will have to strip off redhat names and
> trademarks from the end product which is basically what rebuild clones
> like centos(.org) does.
>
> the trademark restrictions are necessary for two things
>
> * prevent confusion
> * to protect the trademark from being diluated and lost


IANAL, but if you pass a copy to your friend, or install it on multiple
machines yourself there's no reason to remove all the trademarks.  
Afterall, you're not infringing on their trademark by installing it on
more than one machine.

Of course, as I understand it, doing this would be contrary to your
support agreement.  RedHat has been very quiet on this subject but the GPL
states you can not place additional restrictions on derived works beyond
what is specified in the GPL itself, so installing and sharing as you like
would seem appropriate.

Cheers,
Sean





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