Red Hat subscription agreement questions

[Ryan Lynch]

Hi, Alex,

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 18:42, Alex Duckers <alex.duckers at gmail.com> wrote:

> "every machine that runs red hat enterprise linux requires a subscription
> from red hat."
>
> I don't believe that's true -
> •       http://www.redhat.com/rhel/renew/faqs/#6.  Perhaps you need it to
> install it, but after the 1 or 3 years are up (whatever you
> purchased), you don't have to uninstall it if you choose not to re-up
> the subscription.
>

Somebody pointed me to that FAQ, off-list, and I got a similar impression
from it.  But it's still pretty ambiguous--it doesn't directly address
whether you can renew SOME of your machines without renewing ALL of them.

I've received a few off-list replies, since I originally posted, and a
couple of them come from people with some authority in the matter.  (I have
been asked not to re-forward them to the list, otherwise I would do it.)
They all echo what Red Hat's support and sales departments said:  You must
have a subscription for every machine you install and operate.

Still no response to the emails I sent to Red Hat asking for clarifications
and some documentation, though.



> I wish there was a straight answer somewhere to these questions.
> Another thing that has come up recently with a customer is being told
> that if they renew subscriptions for any of their RHEL servers, then
> they must do them all.  You can't pick and choose (say I only want
> support on my 10 critical machines...)
>
>
This brings up an interesting point:  Regardless of what we all *think*
about the subscription agreement, the GPL, and the legal issues, I have
heard several independent statements from Red Hat employees, and they all
seem to agree that all machines require a subscription purchase, in all
cases, unless you install entirely from the SRPMs (or run a distro that
does, like CentOS).

It's becoming pretty clear to me that this is, in fact, Red Hat's policy on
subscriptions.  They don't make it very clear, or make much of an effort to
correct the (apparantly massive) public misconceptions to the contrary.

But I don't know how much that matters.  My colleagues and I can debate the
legal issues and the GPL text from now until RHEL 6 ships, and isn't it all
pretty irrelevant?  Let's say we ignored the subscriptions issue and
installed en masse, and then RH discovered it and pulled the plug on our RHN
account.  We really couldn't do anything to stop them.  In the end, it's Red
Hat's interpretation that counts, not ours.

-Ryan