Red Hat subscription agreement questions

[inode0]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Ryan Lynch <ryan.b.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>    3)  Is the RHN subscription agreement legally enforceable, given clause
> 6 of the GPL:  "You may not impose any further restrictions on the
> recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."  Does the GPL forbid Red
> Hat from imposing or enforcing the subscription agreement?  Given clause 0,
> I believe the answer is, for the third time, "yes":  "Activities other than
> copying, distribution, or modification are not covered by this License; they
> are outside its scope.  The act of running the Program is not restricted."
>
> In case issue #3 isn't clear, I have heard several people make the argument
> that because RHEL 5 is distributed under the GPL, Red Hat cannot impose an
> additional restriction on our company, via the subscription agreement, that
> requires us to purchase subscriptions for every RH machine that our company
> operates?

You might find this exchange with the FSF interesting reading.

http://macnugget.org/stuff/fsf-exchange.txt

John