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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.
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.
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!