On Saturday 04 Jul 2009, jtd wrote:
On Saturday 04 July 2009, Pravin Dhayfule wrote:
I went ahead to cross check Red Hat License Agreement, and saw it to be similar to Microsoft's EULA that states, you cannot install it on more computers than the licensed purchased for etc.
This applies ONLY to the SERVICE. You CAN install to hundred machines if you want to. And no amount of licence weasel words will change that fact. The reason being that the developers of the software have given you that right and that right cannot be taken away by anyone other than the software author.
Read the post by Atanu again. RH cannot prevent you from redistributing or making copies of the software in RHEL; however they can restrict you from copying and/or redistributing their trademarked logos and artwork, and for that reason it is illegal to make copies of or to redistribute RHEL.
So my question is... Can Red Hat enterprise products be really considered as Open Source (as their website claims)
All software that is under FLOSS licences (GPL, BSD, APL, etc.) are Opensource.
However there are likely to be several closed packages included (eg. nvidia drivers) and these maybe governed by more restricted licences, including being restricted to installation on one single cpu and or user.
Again, while the software licences are FOSS, the artwork and logos that RHEL includes are not. You can copy the software, but you can't copy the distribution as a while without violating the law (note: trademark law, NOT copyright law).
Regards,
-- Raju