[ILUG] Redhat Licensing

[Paul Jakma]

On Tue, 4 May 2004, Niall O Broin wrote:

> I didn't - from the menu you get to the subscription agreement by
> selecting RHES 3 (U.S.) and from there, there's a link to the EULA.

Oh that wee link to the left? Its included in Appendix 1 anyway.
 
> It is - it's a licensing programme for RedHat supported Linux. But
> that's a different kettle of fish.

Err, no. It's a subscription agreement. RedHat do not offer any
licence other than GPL'ing the collective work. Wrt to their
trademarked stuff, they offer /no/ licence at all, other than that
you can install it from the CD. Indeed, I suspect their entire
subscription agreement hinges around whether you install the
RHEL-licenced-only packages.

(see the MYEL question from other post).

> >From that page:
> 
> "Software" means the software purchased under this Agreement, which is
> provided under Red Hat's trademarks and is subject to the applicable end user
> license agreement.

	"is subject to the applicable end user license agreement."
 
Which this "EULA" is at pains to point is determined by the
individual licences of the component works. So other than the
standard disclaimers the sum total of this "EULA" is "See the EULA
for each package", which for most of the packages == NULL, GPL
restricts only redistribution.

> Perhaps you're too asleep to recognise the expansion of the EULA abbreviation?

No, that document is essentially meaningless other than due
diligence, they disclaim and affirm the standard rights and point you
to other documents/files to discover what your rights really are with
respect to the software. (NB: And _NOT_ to the subscription
agreement).
 
> And that "boilerplate EULA" is indeed interesting, because it
> clearly states that you can redistribute RHEL, with the exception
> of commercial redistribution of RedHat's trademarked elements.

Exactly. The subscription agreement, which _does_ impose lots of
conditions on contracted parties, also goes to great lengths to
stress that it in no way restricts the rights granted by the licences
of component packages.

Clearly, RedHat are even more deviously evil than we at first
suspected.

regards,
-- 
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