[rhn-users] Re: Questions on RHEL license

[Ben Russo]

Chieu Phan wrote:
> Please help answer the following questions:
> 
> Is it true that security and software updates available from Red Hat
> Network that can be obtained using an active RHEL subscription are
> also released under the General Public License (GPL)?
> 
> Many thanks!!

IANAL, so this is not "legal" advice...

AFAIK

Almost all of the security and software updates are GPL'd.
There are a smattering of packages that have other open source licenses 
(like mozilla, BSD, Apache, etc).  And there are a few packages (just a 
few) which are not "free" (as in beer or in speech) like the IBM Java stuff.

RHN has a EULA which stipulates that as a user of their service you will 
not use it to garner packages for use on more than the number of RHEL 
systems you have licenses for (or something to that effect).


You can get all the source RPM's for free from RedHat's Public FTP site.
And there is no EULA for accessing this FTP site. So feel free to use 
the SRPM's from this FTP site.

There are many packages in RHEL which are the same (bit for bit) as what 
is available in Fedora and/or other versions of RedHat derived linux 
distro's.


REPEAT, I AM NOT A LAWYER.