Red Hat License Challenged

An anonymous reader writes: "David McNett has noticed an apparent discrepancy between the Red Hat Linux EULA and the GPL. He has written an open letter to the FSF asking for their opinion on the matter. Does Red Hat have the right to "audit your facilities and records" to ensure compliance with their license?" McNett misreads the Red Hat documents. Their contract is for the various services, not the software, and for the services they are entitled to demand whatever concessions they think the market will bear.

Comments

People, the license is available online... READ IT

[sabaco]

First, unlike the slashdot editors, ;) IANAL. That said, I'm fairly sure a lot of people aren't reading this, and haven't looked at the RHEL license. As if they ever do. ;) (The letter mentioned in the article is only concerned with RH Enterprise Linux versions by the way, and the clauses do not appear in the other versions as far as I could see.) Really though there are some serious points here. I'd suggest that everyone who is really interested in this should go look at the license agreements online on Red Hat's site. Some other people have already quoted some of it, but I'll give a brief summary here of the questionable parts.

This Subscription Agreement (the "Agreement") is between Red Hat, Inc. ("Red Hat") and any purchaser or user ("Customer") of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (or Red Hat Linux Advanced Server), Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES or Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (collectively, "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" or "the Software").
PLEASE READ THIS AGREEMENT CAREFULLY BEFORE PURCHASING OR USING RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX. BY USING OR PURCHASING RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX, CUSTOMER SIGNIFIES ITS ASSENT TO THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU ARE ACTING ON BEHALF OF AN ENTITY, THEN YOU REPRESENT THAT YOU HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO ENTER INTO THIS AGREEMENT ON BEHALF OF THAT ENTITY. IF CUSTOMER DOES NOT ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, THEN IT MUST NOT USE OR PURCHASE RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX.

Read that carefully. (just like it says! heh) It says that if you do not agree to the Subscription Agreement then you must not use RHEL. It doesn't say you can't use RHEN or Red Hat Support Services, it says you can not use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.

Here it says clearly, if you want to install RHEL on additional systems, you must purchase support for each system from Red Hat. Notice that it uses the term "Installed System" which it has already defined as "the hardware on which the Software is installed" and the Software was defined in the first part to mean RHEL in general. It does not mention RHEN or support services. It is strictly defined as hardware that has RHEL installed on it.

The Agreement also goes on to talk about various auditing and fines for not buying support for all your systems, but it looks like we've pretty much already gotten to the primary problems I think. If you use RHEL (which is licensed under the Gnu GPL) and you haven't purchased support, you are in violation of the Agreement. Then again, I don't see how the Agreement can be valid, since it places additional restrictions on the use of the software, which is prohibited by the Gnu GPL.