Re: [Gnu-arch-users] a business model for free software

[Andrew Suffield]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 11:49:14PM -0800, Thomas Lord wrote:
> Your self-admitted superficial glance at the contract is
> wrong too -- the contract does have that property that a
> quick glance at it is likely to lead to a misreading.

I checked more carefully, and it does appear that I was correct. You
have two main options:

 - purchase a subscription under the contract you have noted

    http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us.html

 - use the free 30-day evaluation service

    http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_trial.html

In the second case, you will be provided with a copy of RHEL under
this license over here:

http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_rha_eula.html

Which is fairly inoffensive, modulo the trademark issue.

At the end of your 30-day evaluation period, you lose access to the
servers where you downloaded that, but retain your copy of the
software which you can redistribute as you see fit.

So, the full subscription contract that you were complaining about is
an optional extra, and is primarily a support contract.

I believe they will also send you a copy of the software without the
30-day subscription or any other contracts, but they don't provide
that service from their main website any more - you have to ask for
it. Or you can just receive it from somebody else who has used the
evaluation service.