Advanced Server free?

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 12:56 6/10/2004, Eric Wood wrote:
>Um... it is free.  Otherwise http://www.whiteboxlinux.org guys would be
>doing something illegal.  The support isn't free.
>
>Remember, RH is a GPL compliant company.

And the GPL *only* requires them to make the source code available to those 
people to whom they supply binaries. If you buy a support contract for AS, 
you get access to binaries and you also get access to source; this makes 
them GPL-compliant. If you distribute the binaries or source to others you 
void your support contract but you are not doing anything illegal as far as 
the GPL goes but you *are* infringing on Red Hat's trademarked items such 
as their name and logo (Shadowman) which they have explicitly forbidden you 
from distributing in the same contract.

The fact that Red Hat, Inc. makes full source code (neatly packaged in SRPM 
format even!) available freely to all and sundry is an act of generosity on 
their part. They would be entirely within their rights to cease making that 
available to non-subscribers at *any* time and still be within the GPL. So 
take advantage of those SRPMS as the WBEL guys do, and thank Red Hat for 
them... it is a nice thing to do, it is *not* a requirement.

Cheers,


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com