[lug] Fedora *MEETS* KRUD comments wanted

[Jeffrey Siegal]

Ed Hill wrote:
>>>Because it isn't a question of restrictions, it is a question of 
>>>pricing.  The RHN service is priced on the basis of how many systems 
>>>it is used *for* (and not, as you suggested, on the basis of "direct 
>>>connections").  Read the agreement.
> 
> 
> Hi Jeffrey,
> 
> Would you please post a URL or an excerpt from their license(s) that
> supports the above statement?

"The Service may be used only for the benefit of the Customer and only 
for the systems with subscriptions. Customer may not use one 
subscription for Services for more than one system concurrently." (I 
don't have a URL handy, but this comes from the RHN ToS.)

It is true that the term "Service" is not very clearly defined in the 
agreement, but I have it on good authority that Red Hat agrees with my 
interpretation correct and requires that its corporate customers to 
purchase a subscription for each system running the supported software. 
  (In the absence of some very large negotiated deals, of course.)

This, by the way, has always been the way Cygnus priced its support for 
GPLed software (mostly the development tool chain) even before Red Hat 
bought them.

> On the other hand, I've re-read the GPL and can find plenty of evidence
> there [eg. http://www.redhat.com/licenses/gpl.html] to support my
> claims.  For many of the packages within RHEL, Red Hat must obey the GPL
> terms and therefore cannot add any further restrictions.

I agree that Red Hat can not add any further restrictions to the 
packages themselves, but:

a) It is certainly *not* the case that all of RHEL (or RHL for that 
matter) is GPLed.  There are large and important portions that are not, 
such as XFree86, Apache, etc.

b) Even for those packages that are GPLed, I don't agree that Red Hat 
can not set its price for support at $X times the number of systems 
running the suported software within the organization.  Since the GPL 
does not obligate the distributor to provide support (or any other 
service), the terms under which such support or services are provided 
are outside its scope.