Re: OT: SCO Extortion

RedHat Enterprise IS redistributable, and there are third party distros
based on it. However there is one major gotcha:

The contract for the enterprise services for RHEL state that every copy of
RedHat Enterprise Linux in an organization MUST be signed up for the
enterprise services if any one copy is. This means that an organization
does lose the install flexibility that open source normally gives, though
they still can run Fedora on other systems where they do not need these
services.

From RedHat's perspective, this avoids a shell game of support "This server
gets the services this week but this other server got the support last week.
So we only need one subscription." Again, RHEL's licenses are not
"licenses" but rather service contracts.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

IANAL, but I have checked with them in the past over this issue.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: "Chris Travers" <chris(at)travelamericas(dot)com>
Cc: <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 12:55 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] OT: SCO Extortion

> Chris Travers wrote:
> > I am not sure where SCO is coming from or where its influences are.
> > However, I have noticed a number of interesting issues which makes me
think
> > that this is a major problem at SCO which goes back quite a ways.
> >
> > I remember Ransom Love (former Caldera CEO) writing that the GPL was bad
for
> > business. At the time Caldera was a has-been Linux distributor who was
> > facing declining sales in part because they had never embraced
> > redistributable distros and was being crowded out by RedHat and others.
> > Caldera at the time was trying to sell per seat licenses for its Linux
> > distro and justifying this by bundling it with proprietary development
> > tools. Love left Caldera after they acquired the OS division of
Tarantella
> > (formerly SCO) and headed the UnitedLinux project for a while. Sometime
> > afterward, Caldera renamed itself as The SCO Group.
>
> I am not sure you can call Love wrong in his GPL comments. Isn't this
> what Red Hat is moving to with their Enterprise release? I don't think
> that is distributable. You can have the source and compile your own,
> but I don't think you can distribute the Red Hat binaries anymore. Is
> that correct?
>
> --
> Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
> pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us | (610) 359-1001
> + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
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>
>