steve wrote:
b. Piracy is the practice of hijacking a naval vessel and plundering it. Software Piracy is a silly nonsensical term. Software related violations include things like copyright violation, trademark infringement and unfortunately patent violations ...etc.
Now that we've cleared that up, here is a simplified (IMHO) explanation of what everybody already said:
RHEL == Linux Kernel + GPL/BSD/MIT ...etc licensed Software + Red Hat trademarks (artwork etc)
- How must does the RHEL distro cost ?
- 0/-
RHEL is not available free of cost. The free of cost version is Fedora.
- How does Red Hat make money, if the cost of the RHEL distro is 0 ?
- Subscriptions, trainings, consultancy ...and maybe more.
- How is the RHEL distro. distrubuted ?
- The sources are available for free on redhat.com and Red Hat provides CDs/DVDs
of the distro. to it's customers (people who buy subscriptions or undertake trainings ...etc)
This means that RHEL CDs are not free of cost.
- Can you ask Red Hat to send you a RHEL distro CD if you are not a Red Hat
customer ?
- No
- Can you download RHEL sources from Red Hat servers ?
- Yes
- Can you use the downloaded sources to make a RHEL CD ?
- Yes
This CD will be exclusive of the RH trademarked stuff.
- Can you distribute (including sharing with your neighbor) the CDs you made ?
- Yes ! *IF* you remove all the trademarks from the CDs (so that your neighbour
is clear about the fact that what she is getting is *not* coming directly from Red Hat)
The CDs made from sources can be distributed but original RHEL CDs with RH trademark additions cannot be duplicated and distributed.
- Instead of making copies, can you use the same CD/DVD you received from Red
Hat to install RHEL on more than one systems ?
- Yes, you can.
I don't think so. It is the same as using a copy.