I think that the business of putting a copyright on top of a collection of
software where individual projects are copyrighted under GPL is pretty
confusing. I would avoid copying Red Hat's CD because I honestly can't say that
it would be completely legal. Either that or visit Red Hat's web page where they
provide a link to a downloadable copy or perhaps visit www.linuxiso.org and
get the ISO images from there.
I find it odd that they put a copyright notice on their CDs and then give a link
to the .iso image files. I'd guess that since they're certainly in the business
to make money, they would like users to buy the official distribution and
hopefully buy support. Support costs would rapidly outstrip whatever profits
they make on their distributions if the user really uses it though...
-Alex
Wirth's Law: Software gets slower faster than Hardware gets faster!
"On the side of the software box, in the 'System Requirements' section, it
said 'Requires Windows 95 or better'. So I installed Linux." - Anonymous
On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Benjamin Scott wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Alex Hewitt USG wrote:
> > Because Linux software is usually copyrighted under GPL, I have the
> > impression that you can copy a distribution at will.
>
> A distribution is almost always an aggregation of separate works on a single
> medium. Each work has its own copyright, and reproduction is legally assessed
> on an individual basis. Anything written by the distribution compiler is
> treated the same way.
>
> > Is that impression accurate? I'm looking at an official Red Hat 7.1 CD and
> > it has the following notice:
> >
> > "Copyright (c) 2001 Red Hat, Inc.
> > All Rights reserved. Made in the USA."
>
> Perhaps Red Hat is notifying you of the copyright they hold on their own
> work. In that case, it really should say "and others" (or something like
> that) on it as well. In any event, the licenses of the individual works, as
> described above, still applies.
>
> Another possibility is that the notice applies to the artwork on the CD (or
> box) itself. This is not as silly as it sounds. Your average fast-food
> hamburger wrapper, for example, will have a copyright notice printed on it.
> That copyright applies to the wrapper artwork, not the hamburger inside it.
>
> The best analogy for this I can think of is what would happen if you took a
> bunch of different magazines and put them into a single three-ring binder, and
> then added your own analysis and abstract at the front, with its own, separate
> copyright and notice.
>
> > If I wanted, could I burn a copy of this CD?
>
> Assuming all the works on the CD include a license allowing reproduction and
> distribution, yes. You could even sell it at a profit, if you like. You
> cannot, however, call it "Official Red Hat Linux", or you are stepping on Red
> Hat's trademark policy.
>
> Be aware that not all Linux distributions follow as open a policy. For
> example, take SuSE's YaST install/configuration tool. As I understand it, as
> of SuSE Linux 7.0, SuSE does not allow you to redistribute YaST. The only way
> to copy the CD is without YaST, which breaks the distribution rather severely.
>
> > I know that ISO images of most of the distributions are available on-line
> > but I'm not sure what the copyright restrictions are for the distribution
> > CDs.
>
> In most cases, the CD you buy in the store is identical (or close enough) to
> the CD you get online. The exception would be when a vendor like Red Hat adds
> some "commercial", "proprietary", or otherwise restricted software to their
> boxed sets. In those cases, you likely cannot copy those parts of the set.
> The rest is still legal to copy, however. Again, the copyrights and licenses
> of the individual works still apply.
>
> Finally, I am not a lawyer. See disclaimer below.
>
> --
> Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not |
> | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or |
> | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. |
>
>
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