On Fri, 2003-01-03 at 13:56, Michael Schwendt wrote: ..... > Unless, of course, you rolled your own updates or applied the binary > software updates also in the second firm, which would be illegal > with regard to the licence agreement. ...
OK, (I originally started this thread with a question). I now see in print from the links that others have provided that RedHat is specifically stating that the $799 fee is for the privelage of installation support for one year on one server AND for the privelage of access to the binary RPM'd errata, bug/security patches via the internet for one year from that same one server (only). RedHat states (in writing) that as far as copying and redistribution of each software package (whether in binary form or source code), that is dependent on the EULA included in each package by itself. >From what it sounds like, only a select few of the packages will not be redistributable. So, although I will only have the privelage of downloading errata and security/bug patch RPM's through 1 machine, there is nothing stopping me from reading the EULA of each RPM downloaded and deciding if it is redistributable to my other "unlicensed" servers or not. It may damage RedHat's business model, but that is not my problem. RedHat is taking full advantage of the GPL and is staking their business on the good-hearted work of thousands of programmers who have GPL'd their works. Taking benefit of that work is possible only if you honor the GPL. So, as I see it RedHat cannot have their cake and eat it too. ***** Now a personal opinion... BTW, RedHat is profitable now. Their own books have said so. And they are currently maintaining 6.2, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 and AS, that is SEVEN distributions. The way I read their release cycles and such they will be cutting that down to 4 (RHAS RHAW and the last 2 RHL releases). So they should be even more profitable then. The costs of regression testing and quality assurance and software repository management are a ONE TIME cost. The network bandwidth is recurrent and scales with the number of people hitting their network for bandwidth. I am an RHCE, (shelled out $2500 for it), and my department recently purchased 25 one year enterprise subscriptions to RHN for the price of about $100 a piece (on my recommendation that this was a great value!) I even have original PURCHASED RedHat Linux CD's for 6.2, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0. I bought them myself at a cost of about 20-50 for each set because to me that was a reasonable value. For the servers where we have to have "official" oracle support I might buy the $799 "license" just to be official. However for the 10-20 other servers that I have for every one of those official ones I think that I will use CURRENT. http://www.biology.duke.edu/computer/unix/current/ I have already explained to RedHat that their Value-Add of RHN access doesn't justify $799 per server per year to me with the number of servers that I have so long as the alternative exists of simply redistributing the packages that I legitimately obtain and forgoing direct RHN access on the other servers. If the cost was more in line with the current offerings for RHN Enterprise subscriptions I would be more than happy to buy it, for then the value of the proposition would make sense to me. -Ben. -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
