Am Fre, 2003-10-03 um 03.43 schrieb Bill Anderson: > On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 19:34, Miguel M wrote: > > Erik Williamson wrote 2003-10-02 > > > > >I inquired about what would happen if one was to (after one year) simply > > >get the SRPMS that are released as updates, compile and redistribute to > > >existing machines... but that's a no-no. > > > > And what would happen if (after one year) one downloads > > the update SRPMS to existing machines and compiles > > independently the same packages in everyone of them? I'm a little bit puzzled about that long lasting discussion here. The GPL is intended to protect freedom of information about software and software technologies, it is intended to protect free access to those technologies. But the GPL is not intended to protect someone, who lets others work hard and spend a lot of money (here: RH's enterprise version), picking up that work for his own profit only. The GPL may not forbid such an behaviour (in favour to protect freedom) but it's not the intended course of action in general. And that discussion will not resolve the causes for this discussion. Nobody would discuss recompiling and redistribution of the RHEL SRPMS to that extent if there wouldn't be that gap between Fedora and the enterprise line (in terms of period of time for maintenance, stability and time) which lets small and medium businisses staying in the dust (or at least they feel so). Maybe the discussion is needed to convince people at Red Hat that the gap does really existst. Peter > > It doesn't matter either way. The SRPMS are covered by the GPL. The > SRPMS are available on the ftpsite. The RHN/Service you pay for is > support service and access to *binaries* of the updates. There is > nothing RH can do if you download a SRPM of a GPLed program and then put > it on other machines, built or not.
