[Asterisk-Users] Re: Advice on OS Choice

[Kevin Walsh]

David McNett [nugget at slacker.com] wrote:
> On 14-Oct-2004, Stephen R. Besch wrote:
> > My understanding is that if you don't ask for or need support, RedHat
> > (and the other distro's as well) can be downloaded and installed for
> > free. Am I wrong about this? Isn't that the whole point of the GPL on
> > linux? 
> >
> No, it is a violation of the EULA on RedHat's server products to run them
> without having purchased a support agreement.  It is not permitted to
> obtain or run RedHat Enterprise Linux without having paid for it.
> 
> I'm not sure how they get away with this practice on GPL'd code, but they
> do.
>
Red Hat have embedded their trademark all over their Enterprise
editions so that they can restrict sales in that way.  Red Hat still
have an obligation to release the various GPLed components as usual but
don't have to package the components nor create a downloadable CD ISO
image.

There are various distributors, such as White Box, who have taken the
various GPLed components, used in Red Hat Enterprise, and have packaged
them up.  The GPLed components don't (and can't) include any of Red Hat's
trademarks in any restrictive way, of course.

With Red Hat Enterprise, you're paying for the "privilege" of getting
a packaged distro with support and upgrades.  If you don't need the
support then you can freely use White Box and get exactly the same code.
The White Box distro can get away with this because of the GPL.  If
GNU/Linux was licensed under a BSD-style license then Red Hat could
easily close the source - just as Apple did when they stole BSD code
to create "their" OS/X effort.  I don't believe that Red Hat would do
that sort of thing anyway - those tactics are best left to Apple and
Microsoft.

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