On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 8:08 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> 1) RH doesn't license RHEL; it provides subscriptions to RHEL. The >> individual have licenses... >> >> 2) What might be the rationale for RH to release SRPMs (as SRPMs >> previously and as a git tree now) that are different from the SRPMs >> from which it builds RHEL?! >> >> 3) The RPMs that are distributed by SL and CentOS are sometimes >> different from the RPMs that are distributed by RH because, for >> example, RH might use brpackage-x.y-1.el7 to satisfy >> package-i.j-k.el7's BuildRequires but might only release >> brpackage-x.y-2.el7. So SL and CentOS have to use the latter to build >> package-i.j-k.el7's. > > Ok for clarification the subscription is a subscription for support > not the software per the terms of the GPL license.
Thanks. I was unclear, especially since I skipped "packages" between "individual" and "have" in point 1... > In no way is Red Hat required to provide BINARY RPM's SRPM's or even > the spec files to generate RPM, however in the past they did. Now they > still provide the patches and spec files but they don package them for > you because that is part of the "support" you get with the subscription > and the GPL and the GNU manifesto clearly states that they are not only > allowed to do this but in fact this was a recommended business model > for free speech software since long before the Linux kernel was created. > > Red hat is doing nothing wrong and reality has a long standing history > of going above and beyond what they are required to do for the community. > > By the way the Pre RHEL version of Red Hat still exists they just renamed > it Fedora and stopped charging for box sets because once people started > getting DSL lines and CD/DVD burners it didn't make sence to still > attempt to put it in a pretty box in a retail store and charge $90 for a > bunch of CD's you could have downloaded over your 28.8k modem if you were > willing to tie up a phone line for a few days. I never meant to imply that RH was doing anything wrong - and I agree with you.
