support requirement

[John Cowan]

bruce at perens.com scripsit:

> Thus, their license requires that if you distribute a derived work of their
> program _and_ you provide support on reasonably comparable programs,
> that you provide support for their program too. The provision has no effect
> on organizations like Debian that don't provide support.

Vendor X should have more faith in the free market.  Support providers
will pick up a product if they think they can do so with benefit to
them, i.e. if the product has customers demanding support.
If Vendor X itself is such a customer, I can't believe that they
can't find anyone willing to sign a support contract.

But if I were Red Hat, I wouldn't touch their products with the 11.5
foot pole reserved for touching things you don't touch with a ten-foot
pole.  :-)  The license essentially gives Vendor X a license to sue:
"reasonably comparable", indeed!

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan at ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin