Red Hat subscription agreement questions

[hike]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:07 PM, Ryan Lynch <ryan.b.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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It appears that the lack of clarity is on your part.

It is a recognizable psychology phenomena that we label things as ambiguous
(among other things) when we are involved.

If you want to use "Red Hat" without a subscription, remove the Red Hat
packages that carry the Red Hat copyrighted materials and switch to CentOS
or one of the several "compiled from Red Hat source code" distribution.

You can also ask any Red Hat certified technician/engineer and they will
tell you the Red Hat stance on the subject.

You can search the archive of the Red Hat sponsored mailing list and find
this same answer to the original question as well as a list of the Red Hat
packages needed to make an RHEL installation just a Linux installation (and
not fall under the Red Hat agreements/licenses).