[Asterisk-Users] Re: Advice on OS Choice

[Peter Svensson]

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Joe Greco wrote:

> > 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.

No, it is not. The restriction is placed on the non-gpl components. The 
gpl is very clear that shipping gpl and non-gpl components on the same 
media does not interfere with the gpl.

> 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 ...

No, you do not. Attributions have no creative part, they are purely 
functional. Indeed, copyright messages are left intact in all the 
RHEL-based distributions. 

In fact, the non-gpl rpm:s are marked as such.  There are some places
where the argument may be used such as the naming of configuration files
(/etc/redhat-release) and others. Those names are not purely functional
(they are chosen at will and hence have a creative element). However, they
are only distributed along with a gpl component. They themselfes are not
under gpl. So this is ok too. 

Nothing to see here, move along folks.

This is the same as it would have been without the eula. Creating copies 
requires a permission. For the gpl that is given but not for the non-gpl 
parts.

In fact, without the eula you may not have been allowed to install the
non-gpl parts of the distribution even if you bought a copy of RHEL. In
some countries installation equals creating a copy. This is prohibited
unless an eula grants that right.

Peter