[Asterisk-Users] Re: Advice on OS Choice

[Joe Greco]

> On 14-Oct-2004, Joe Greco wrote:
> > The GPL strips some of these freedoms by forcing the distribution of
> > source code.  It does not, however, prevent the code from being sold.
> 
> This is not what is concerning about RedHat's behavior. 

Then I apologize, I thought the point was that they were selling it,
but perhaps you've got a finer point here that I missed.  Sorry.  :-)

> They require 
> you to purchase RHEL if you intend to use it.  I don't misunderstand
> the GPL in that it allows them to sell RHEL.  I am confused how they 
> can disallow people from using it without payment.
> 
> RedHat further encumbers RHEL with a EULA which extends the GPL and
> further restricts your rights to use the product.

That, then, sounds like it might be a violation of the GPL.  The GPL 
is, sadly, a maze of twisty little untested legal strategies, and even
the IP lawyers don't know for sure.

Bearing in mind that it is highly unlikely (but nonetheless possible)
that RedHat is able to distribute the code under a non-GPL'd license,
of course.  I would imagine that this would require the permission of
thousands of contributors.  They almost certainly haven't done that.
Let's see what they did.... (read, read, read)

I haven't read all of this extensively, nor have I had our IPL look
at it, but it kind of looks like they're using some bizarre combination
of trademark protection and transferrence of responsibility to make what
you're talking about sort-of happen.

Section 1 of the EULA says, essentially, "go ahead, it's GPL".

Section 2 of the EULA says, essentially, "But we own our trademark and
you cannot distribute that and we've stamped it all over the place.  So
if you distribute it you better damn well remove them all and woe to you
if you fsck up."

If this analysis is correct, this definitely flies in the /spirit/ of the
GPL, which clearly does not expect people to have to modify files (and 
understand the side effects of the modifications) prior to redistributing
them.

The "not spelled out" part of this is that "Red Hat" itself is actually
a trademark, and I suspect is stamped on copyright messages throughout
the distribution, and /text has legally been considered an image/, so 
literal compliance with this EULA would require a redistributor to strip 
the Red Hat copyrights out of the files, and I expect that that would 
violate the GPL ...

I have a bad feeling that some lawyers looked very carefully at every
word and found a loophole.  It's not a big loophole, but I think you
would need to be prepared to defend in court, and that's really all the
deterrence they need.

Even if Section 2 would happen to be directly in violation of the GPL.
Because testing /that/ in court would be very expensive, too.

Welcome to Copy Protected GNU Software in the 21st Century.

Foo.

101 reasons to avoid EULA's.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.