[lug] RedHat Licensing

[Evelyn Mitchell]

I am not a Lawyer, nor do I play one on Television :)
This is no subsitute for professional Legal advice.

As far as I know, there are no usage restrictions in most
Open Source licenses (GPL, LGPL, BSD-variant, or Mozilla Public Licenses).
The restrictions included in most of these licenses relate to
1) Availability of source code - you can't sell a product containing
   any of these and deny the user the ability to get the source code
   in some way. So, binary-only distribution where you disclaim all
   knowledge of the original license is bad.

2) Changes to the code must be returned to the original author (Mozilla
   variants), released as patches to the original code (Artistic License),
   or made availale under the original license (GPL).

3) Some open source products which don't use standard licenses may
   be a problem. For example, Qmail may not be redistributed in anything
   but binary form. djbdns (Dan Bernstein's BIND replacement) requres
   permission from Dan Bernstein to redistribute it as a software
   publisher, and doesn't seem to have any sort of licensing statement
   included at all. It's these sorts of products which can bite you (legally
   speaking) if you decide to include them in a product. As far as I know
   nothing that is likely to be included in a core Linux distribution
   (the kernel, the most commonly used daemons) has a wierd license.

If your Lawyers are concerned about using Linux in an embedded product, 
there are several distributors who would be happy for you to have
their variant used, with (Lineo) or without (Hard Hat) per unit
license fees.

So, in general I'd say don't worry, but in the particular I'd say
it depends on what you're using.

A good further reference for this is at:

  http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html
  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Evelyn IANL (I am not a Lawyer) Mitchell
efm at tummy.com

On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 03:38:00PM -0600, Harris, James wrote:
> Howdy all -
> 
> Sorry to ask a question that's answer is easilly available, however, I need
> a really quick answer and thought some of you (especially the KRUD foks)
> would be able to give me a quick, generalized answer.
> 
> If a device manufacturer were to sell a product utilizing RedHat for the
> operating system, what licensing agreements would they be held to?  I'm
> basically being asked questions from management like "are we going to have
> to buy licenses from RedHat?", "do we have to get in bed with them?" etc.
> My immediate answer was: "Linux is free", but then I realized that I have no
> idea how selling a device utilizing a commercial distro works.
> 
> Any general information would be greatly appreciated.  Obviously when/if the
> time comes to be 100% serious, we will do all of the appropriate reading of
> fine print and all agreements, but for now I need to prove a concept
> quickly.
> 
> Thanks a billion!
> 
> Jim Harris
> Systems Administrator
> Network Operating Systems Group
> EDS @ Maxtor Corporation
> 303.702.3853
>