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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.
Why should the FSF be able to interpret Red Hat's inconsistent licensing terms? Wouldn't it be more natural to natural to ask Red Hat for a clarification first?
So, by charging for their services they're able to use a license that relates to their clients' use of the software? How is that different from licensing the actual software?
Actually, I see his point.
RH is saying that if you signup one of your servers to participate in their support services, that they have a right to audit your site (which may be ok), but they seem to imply that if you have 5 other RH servers (that arent participating in their services), they have a right to backbill you (with penalty) as if those servers were participating.
Now, maybe its legally ok for them to ask you to agree to this - but it does seem at quesition wether its 'ethical', and how they can reconcile that with the GPL.
I would definately be interested to read the FSF's response when they publish it.
I remember a Red Hat that forced TrollTech to GPL QT. I remember a RedHat that preferred PostgreSQL over MySQL, voicing a preference for standards compliance. I remember a RedHat that never buckled to the pressue to include a proprietary YAST, and who made Anaconda open source.
What has happened to Red Hat? Where did my favorite UNIX distribution go? I want it back!
Well, assuming I read his letter correctly, Red Hat states that the set up of their system, which is based on Linux, is copywrited. Sort of like the difference between a Ford pickup truck and a Dodge pickup truck. We all know what a pickup truck is, so the styling between the two is apparently what is covered. Perhaps this is the concept Red Hat is drawing on.
But I guess the question is, when adding a second server to the system, does this count as violation of the license? When I buy a pickup truck, I can modify it in any way I feel like -- but I will void the warranty on the truck. This means that I can't get free work done should something fail, because that failure could be caused by one of the modifications I made.
The GPL pretty well allows users to modify whatever they want, so long as they share what they did with the public. But if you created an application that can be run in a GPLed environment, but is not actually part of it, I would assume that this application is to be considered your intellectual property and therefore you can place your own licensing on it.
So- Does Red Hat have any proprietary code in there? I guess in such an event, they could demand that you purchase more licenses for the extra servers you want to add. But if not, then I guess all they could do is claim you voided the warranty, and declare you inelligable for any tech support or warrantied upgrades.
But, that's just my opinion. I think I'll leave this for the legally-experienced to hack out.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
I always found it strange. Basically an audit would be the equivalence of searching ones house/person/car/other property. The only ones usually allowed to do so is the police and they need a warrent and/or at least a suspicion of some sort of crime (this may depend on country of course). This is something ONLY the police are allowed to do, that is, no one else can demand to do it for any reason, so that means you can't put into a contract that someone should be allowed to search you, your house, whatever as a condition in the contract. So what makes people and software companies thing it is OK to do it for computers? And is this something that vary a lot between different countries? I happen to live in Sweden by the way.
Yes, but they dont make this fact clear and thus it's what is causing the trouble and uproar. This fact is not CLEARLY defined and can be interpeted in an overly broad manner. THIS is the basis for the gripe against the terms and conditions.
They want to force redhat to write these things clearly or completely remove them from the OS documentation and only allow them to say such scumbag things in the contract for the services.
I understand redhat's position on this but it was written very poorly and any EULA at all on a linux distro is underhanded and pretty damned scummy.
So I havent bought a RH distro cince 7.1 because of their EULA and words on the CD envelope that states that I agree by the EULA if I open it.
The download site I got 9.0 from didn't have no eula stated and the install doesnt either. so I DO NOT agree to any EULA they have.
simple as that.
They really need to re-think their strategy... small business is one that really need a cheap server product that they can buy a $300-$500 dollar a year minimal support contract on from redhat.. but they do not want that business.
Luckily I found a company that supports slackware in that manner, and they support each release for 5 years before EOL's it in their service packages...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Pardon? I can't install the product without purchasing additional services from RedHat...?
OK - so Red Hat can come in and check I'm not claiming their services for more installations than they authorised their services for. Entirely reasonable. However, "terms and conditions of this Agreement" include the contentious point above, which is certainly not agreeable to.
Not being a RedHat Enterprise customer, I don't have a copy of the license to hand. To any that do: is the term 'Installed Server' defined anywhere? If so, what is the definition please? If it's just a server with an installation of the code on it, then there would appear to be a problem. If the definition is along the lines of 'a server with an installation for which services are also being claimed', then there would appear to be no problem.
Anyone able to clarify that?
Cheers,
Ian
It's more a focus on how to make money without making any effort. Essentially, people patenting concepts and ideas without any intention of actually trying to develop these things. Instead, they are waiting for someone else to put the money, resources and hard work into developing something, and then they come out of nowhere with a massive lawsuit to steal the profit from the company that truly developed the technology.
To me, this is a lot like cyber-squatting: buy up a whole bunch of likely-sounding domain names, and just wait until someone wants to register it and then charge them an arm and a leg for the name. In the meantime, the domain name sits totally useless and unused. (Of course, we all know what happened to that business model!)
There are other companies who try to figure out what their competition is doing, and then file frivolous patents to block their competitor's development projects from seeing the light of day. Of course, we all lose when this happens. And then there are the true leaches, those who have no knowledge or resources to develop a given technology, but purchase the IP and then sue the s**t out of everyone for using it, even though the original patent holders allowed that use. Yet they still have no intention of putting those resources into furthering the technology for the future.
All this anti-patent work does nothing more than stifle innovation and development. And we all know the wonderful things that environment does for the economy and jobs. Putting these legal battles into the press essentially allows the leach to put the "fear of God" into the little people so it makes it easier to cause them to cave in when presented with an "infringement" lawsuit.
Of course, there could be a benefit to all this. If SCO should lose this case, it could create a devastatingly powerful legal precedent showing that just buying IP doesn't necessarily give you free license to bully others with it. But in case the opposite should happen, the only way we're going to change things back to the way they should be is to band together and get our respective legislatures to change the laws.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
There's one thing about any legal document: if it's impossible to enforce, it shouldn't exist. A services contract like the one Red Hat uses is guaranteed to create more trouble than it's worth. Why not make a contract valid for a certain amount of services, such as solving a number of problems? A good Linux contract, IMHO, would contain a list of the types of problems they would solve, and a number of calls allowed, one call per problem solved.
People complain about Slashdot staff being stilly for posting an article which they immediately retract. Those people don't get it.
Not to say that Slashdot is necessarily good journalism, but a good journalist cares about presenting the truth to the reader. (I guess there aren't many good journalists in the world.) In this case, we have someone with an open letter who is passing misinformation. Slashdot editors take this opportunity to publically point out the error in the article in an equally (if not moreso) open manner. This helps everyone.
Slashdot did a good thing.
You're kind of missing the point...
Red Hat = Debian as far as rights go, so long as you aren't asking Red Hat for support. The difference is that Debian doesn't provide an entity which is contractually obligated to answer support questions. All Red Hat is saying is that if you want support, you must pay for every box running our product.
If I remember correctly, RHEL has a 5 year lifetime. RedHat will be support it for 5 years. I think the wording must be changed. I do not think the wording they use is legal. I think it should be noted that RedHat will not support RHEL if you do not get support. (bug fixes, and the other services that make RHEL critical app ready. (an enterprise size oracle database etc) I believe you should be able to install it as many times as you like, but you just won't get the license agreement that RedHat stamps on that version of RH Linux. (the whole 5 year deal) Why should RedHat guaranteed an enterprise level OS if no one wants to pay for it.
My point is, they need to reword their EULA and then everyone can move on.
and to other BSD operating systems. The major players in the Linux community (RH and SuSE) seem to be moving away from the free software model (where they only get paid for the "bundle" of utilities and applications plus the installation sequence). RH has moved to a model in which they've bundled "services" but then have created a pricing structure in which the services cannot be separated from the software.
I don't see how they can justify this pricing under the GPL but the next question is, "who is going to sue Red Hat?" The most likely outcome if RH doesn't change their licensing is that they will try to sue a customer and the court will then decide if they have the grounds under the GPL to do that.
Maybe the EFF should buy one license and then install it on a dozen machines and let RH know what they've done. That should be interesting.
It also seems to me that both RH and SuSE have been making their inexpensive distros less and less suitable for use in a server environment (focusing on the desktop). We do a lot of server installs and with the advent of the workstation focus in Linux last year I began changing to FreeBSD where I'll stay until the SCO thing is over and/or I need to do something that only Linux will do.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
You cannot impose any restrictions on the redistribution of GPL software. "Redistribution" can be defined as to another entity, or to yourself. Just as you cannot force royalties on top of GPL software, you cannot force contract agreements on it either. If you try to do this, the GPL still holds effect, basically invalidating any use of the software altogether.
It really seems that RHAT is violating the GPL here. This is a serious issue, one that RHAT should clarify and correct immediately.
The GPL doesn't give you lots of rights you may think you have. It does give you lots of rights to be able to recreate the program and fix bugs in it and then distribute thouse changes but thats where it ends.
For example, DMCA may restrict your ability to reverse engineer a GPLed program. Its an odd situation since you have source but if the license says you can't reverse engineer it, then you can't and you can get fined (via being sued DMCA style) if you do.
There are other rights as well that may or may not exist. For example, if you send in a patch to a common program. Do you own the copyright on that or does someone else? If you find your code got used illegally, can you do anything about it or must you go back to the main copyright holder to file an action?
GPL gives you additional rights but only in the context of copyright law as it was a decade ago. The license does have conflicts with the DMCA and other newer laws that have not been tested in a court.
GNU is working on a new version of the license but the work will take a long time and be quite expensive.
I complete agree with the gist of your comment. "Entitled" is perhaps a poor choice of words here; what I meant was something like "is not forbidden by the GPL or anything else", or as you suggested, "is legal to do". I was trying to get at the "screw the customer" vibe by mentioning the "whatever the market will bear" phrase, which is capitalism's slogan.
Whether Red Hat's is a good/moral/healthy business practice or not is a separate question from whether it is forbidden. It has often been stated that the "proper" business model to use with Open Source/Free Software is providing services alongside it; that's what RH is doing.