Revisiting an old topic: licensing/titlement and "redistribution"

[Sorin Srbu]

Ray Van Dolson <> scribbled on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 7:31 PM:

What you pay for is the patches and support you get over RHN. The media alone
is as I understand it GPLed. Kinda'. Confusing enough? 8-}


> Hi everyone, this topic has been brought up from time to time, but
> generally I've seen conflicting answers (and have just received one
> from my RH sales rep).
> 
> To avoid getting too overcomplicated by describing my specific
> situation, I'm trying to determine if a copy of RHEL was purchased
> (entitlement and support for one year say), are we then allowed to take
> the installation media and reinstall it to X number of machines and
> just _not_ take advantage of support or updates for those machines?
> 
> This was my initial understanding of things, but reading over the
> Enterprise Agreement and EULA it seems that this may not be the case.
> 
> However I am confused because I understand that you can get a 30-day
> trial of RHEL and continue using it legally even after the trial is
> completed.  I'm not sure what the "real" difference is between simply
> reinstalling from media to many machines and downloading 50 trial
> copies and doing the same.
> 
> In addition, you can continue to use a paid-for installation of RHEL
> after the entitlement has run out.
> 
> My ultimate goal here is not to fleece RH out of any $$ they are owed,
> but to get a handle on what we should and should not be paying for, and
> perhaps get a tighter rein on what is and isn't installed around here.
> :)
> 
> The vast majority of our RHEL installs are point-release specific -- ie
> RHEL4 U4, and are not really production machines but just done to
> reproduce a problem or verify compatibility.  It would be nice in these
> situations to just slap a copy of RHEL on a machine for a few weeks and
> not need to worry about tracking down whether or not we have a valid
> entitlement, etc, etc, or even worse trying to reconcile it all at the
> end of the year when subscriptions expire :)
> 
> Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
> Ray