The Rails Wheels licencing system and Open Source

[Michael Tiemann]

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 6:36 AM, Mark James <mrj at advancedcontrols.com.au>wrote:

> Michael Tiemann wrote:
>
>> Source are fully and freely available, and include such rights as are
>> needed to create completely free binaries (CentOS) or competing supported
>> binaries (Oracle).  The initial subscription must be purchased only if you
>> want certified binaries from Red Hat, and those binaries are distributed
>> with source, but they are not provided in lieu of source.
>>
>
> Thanks Michael. Do those SRPMS, available somewhere on the Red Hat site,
> build to a complete and branded Red Hat system that would normally
> require a subscription? And how practical is it for a user to perform
> that build?


You can download the SRPMS from Red Hat's site, but you cannot build a
branded Red Hat product without  using the Red Hat trademarks.  Trademarks,
as I'm sure you know and understand, are wholly separate from copyright.
And the OSD provides for "Integrity of the Author's Work" which means that
somebody can say "I made this" and prevent others from attributing /their/
product to the original author.  So, no, and with good reason, you cannot
build a branded Red Hat product from Red Hat sources.  However, you can
build a Mark James branded product and sell subscriptions (like Oracle) or
not (like CentOS).  And you can claim, as Oracle and CentOS both do, that
the binaries you build are Just As Good As Red Hat's (as long as do don't
make claims that infringe Red Hat's trademark, and as long as the claims you
make are legal in every jurisdiction in which you plan to make them).

As to the question of practicality, years ago Red Hat collected all the many
places that Red Hat trademarks and brand had crept into its packaging and
distilled it to one or two packages that can be included (if you are Red
Hat) or excluded (if you are not) in a trivial way.  So, no, Red Hat is not
using its brand or its trademarks as any kind of end-run around all the
rights one would expect with open source software.  We could have tried to
make it difficult, but we opted to make it transparent and authentic.

M
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