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.

Michael is right ..

[MoonFog]

From the EULA:
"If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed Servers, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed Server."
Clearly, they are talking about the services, but I agree with the above posters, why post this as news if the letter itself is bogus ?
He also says:
Along these lines, simply installing GNU/Linux binds me to the following "extensions" to the GPL
But .. I didn't think you could add elements to the GPL and still call it a GPL license .. ?

Similar but not the sam

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed Servers, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed Server. During the term of this Agreement and for one (1) year thereafter, Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customerâ(TM)s facilities and records from time to time in order to verify Customerâ(TM)s compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Any such audit shall only take place during Customerâ(TM)s normal business hours and upon no less than ten (10) days prior written notice from Red Hat. Red Hat shall conduct no more than one such audit in any twelve-month period except for the express purpose of assuring compliance by Customer where non-compliance has been established in a prior audit. Red Hat shall give Customer written notice of any non-compliance, and Customer shall have fifteen (15) days from the date of such notice in which to make payment to Red Hat for any additional Installed Servers, such payments to be determined by the number of additional Installed Servers multiplied by the applicable annual fee for Service per server. If Customer is found to have underreported the number of Installed Server by more than five percent (5%), Customer shall, in addition to the annual fee for Service per Installed Server, pay a penalty equal to twenty percent (20%) of the underreported fees.

There are some reasonable limtiations for the audits. If you buy a product including services, the burdon on RH would increase with every deployement, so it seems reasonable to charge per server. But how can you free the software and not the service ?

The point remains to be checked, is there a conflict with the GPL ?

Re:Redh Hat's increasing corporatization...

[CountBrass]

Here's a suggestion: read the story and the sources before commenting ? Even try reading the story posted at the top.

If you did, you would realise that this is to stop customer's abusing their service contract with RH. Shock, horror, customer's abusing a contract, surely not!

Here's how it works. I install 50 copies of RH on my servers. I take out a service contract for just one of them with RH. Guess which is the server that always seems to have the problems....

RH's licence change for it's *services* stops that abuse.

Re:Not only that...

[bahamat]

They don't have to offer anything for download. All they have to do is provide the source, in whatever way they see fit. They can chage you $50 mil for the full source inscribed on gold bricks if they want. The GPL does not say you must provide a no charge download. And they don't have to provide the source to anyone who didn't buy the binaries (and the GPL clearly states they can charge whatever arbitrary ammount they want for the binaries). They don't even have to provide the source with the binaries. They only have to provide it if you ask.

It seems to me that RH is acting fully within the bounds of the GPL. Why is everyone getting their panties in a bunch over a non-issue?

Re:His reading looks ok to me...

[Zeriel]

It seems that Red Hat wants it to work this way:

If you're not paying for a service contract, you can install as many copies of advanced server as you want.

If you ARE paying for a service contract, you have to pay for a contract on all your advanced server machines so as to avoid unethical customers magically changing which machine out of five has the service contract at any one time.

Clear?

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 [redhat.com]. 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.

Re:Similar but not the same

[Anonymous Coward]

If they didn't license there support that way companies would buy one support contract and use it for all there servers. Don't want the support contract? Don't buy it. You can still install Red Hat on all your servers for free.

Bullshit. This is not the case. You obviously haven't tried to obtain a copy of advanced server without purchasing their "support".

Even trying to obtain a copy for evaluation is a total bitch, and has to be done through the underground by RH's own sales guys! What does that tell you?

In truth, RedHat wants to charge a license fee for AS, but feels compelled to go the service model route instead. Which is fine, but they restrict redistribution ("If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed Servers, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed Server") of the software, which I believe is a violation of the GPL.

RedHat, with this license, is saying that if you buy one "copy" with support of their product, then you cannot install it on any other machine. Furthermore, they will come onto your premisis to enforce this agreement. They are checking for installations (their own wording there), not "unauthorized use of service contracts". Big difference.

Fuck that.

Disclaimer: I'm an RHCE.

Re:Not so fast...

[zerocool^]

they have a right to backbill you (with penalty) as if those servers were participating.


I disagree. What if I want support for 1 machine, but I have 4 machines running their OS. I should either:

1.) be able to buy one support licence and bind it to the one computer that I want to have support, and thus if any other of the computers break, I'm SOL, or

2.) Buy one licence, and the first one that breaks, use it for that computer, and then bind it to that computer permanantly (if I'm sneaky).

Analogy: You go out to buy a DVD player, but the store is running a Buy-One-Get-Two-Free. Your budget allows for one DVD player and one extended warranty. So, you buy one DVD player and one extended warranty. But, you take the two free ones anyway, and put them in different rooms of your house. You should have a right to designate the one in the living room as the "purchased" player with the extended warranty, and the other two - if they break, oh well, you're out of luck. They were free anyway.

But the electronics store sure as hell doesn't have the right to bust up into your house and examine the number of DVD players you have so that they can demand you pay backpayment for 2 more extended warranties.

This is a similar situation to the Kazaa problem. A situation which could have legitimate uses, but that also has non-legit uses. Buying one software pack and one licence, but putting the software on multiple computers, has legitimate uses, as long as you understand that you can only get support for one computer. Mabey you wanted to try it out on a non-production machine, or something.
But it also can obviously be misused. You can buy 10 licences and put the software on 100 computers and expect RH to do 10 x the support.

The problem people are having is that redhat is assuming that you're using it for bad. Same as MPAA/divx rippers, Direct TV/smart card programmers, RIAA/Cd burners, AT&T/Wiener whistles, etc etc. It puts redhat in the category with the other people we don't like.

The solution is simple. Stop using redhat. Redhat is the windows of linux, anyway. I mean, we use it at work, cause it's what people want, but if someone asks for debian/gentoo/freebsd/whatever, we're more than happy to accomidate them. I'm really worried that redhat is no longer going to be supporting plain old redhat 7.3 anymore, since it was the last one that was useable in a webserver environment. It's rediculous that they switched to 9.0, glibc changes aside. I hope they're going to be supporting back to 7.3 for a while, considering it's only slightly more than a year old.

And I really feel that the redhat advanced server is BS. I mean, I think it exists to market a product to CTO's that expect software to cost a lot of money. If you expect to pay $1000 for your OS, redhat can accomidate you. But what happened to the whole "give the os away, sell the service" model? What if I want redhat advanced server, which in theory is mostly GPL'd, and one would assume that the differences in the software on the distro's are based on / compiled against GPL'd libraries? What if I want it, and I understand that I won't get support. What if I don't want support? What if I can't afford support? Shouldn't I have access to free software (beer and speech), as long as I'm willing to be my own support?

I dunno. I guess I'm proud of redhat bringing linux to the masses, and of them trying to be a profitable company, but mabey this just goes to show, in order to be profitable in this marketplace, you have to use the same strongarm techniques and high prices as everyone that we don't like.

~Will

Read the License - only Enterprise systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Software (quote): '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").'
Installed Services (quote): 'The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs the Software.'

So Installed Systems applies only to the systems that have "the Software" which they explicitly define as specific ENTERPRISE packages. These packages include "services". If a person does not want "services" they can get a non entreprise version and install it whereever to their heart's content.

Re:RedHat turning into Microsoft

[AwesomeJT]

Why was this a troll? I think I had a valid point! RH is increasingly taking more "Microsoftie" approaches. Yes, you can get into their normal product for $39, but they really upsell the advanced or enterprise stuff. They are also cutting support for 7.x series (and 8) in December (oddly sounds familiar). No more updates, even if you buy thier $60/year RHN. Of course they extend the support for the Advanced and Enterprise versions. Hummmm.

Obviously the moderator didn't even read the article this post was attached to.

NOW THIS IS A REAL TROLL!!!

Re:People, the license is available online... READ

[dirk]

This only applies if you have purchased support services from Red Hat. If you download the software and install it, without any support services from Red Hat, then none of this applies. So it is not a general restriction on the software itself, but on the service. If you purchase support services from Red Hat, then you must purchase support services for every server you have (to avoid people purchasing it for one server and then always claiming the problem is on that 1 server, not the 30 others they have installed). If you do not purchase support services from Red Hat, then the EULA doesn't apply at all (and I believe you never even encounter it in the downloaded version). The GPL still applies, but if you want support services, you have to agree to purchase support services for ever installation.