Is linux free 5017

Bill will presumably make a showing of his argument.

Very few people have actually read RH's licence. I have, and in my opinion it was flat out in contradiction to the GPL ..

The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs or executes the Software.

So Systems are things on which we install (or just run) the Software.

The term "System" means any hardware on which the Software is installed, which may be, without limitation, a server, a work station, a virtual machine, a blade, a parbreastion or an engine, as applicable.

Uh uh .. they just set "installs or executes" a sentence before. Now they say "installed". Which is it? Does not compute. Error. Licence void (IMO).

The initial number of Installed Systems is the number of copies of the Software that Customer purchases.

Uh uh ... they just defined "installed Systems", and therefore the number of such is determined by facts. They can't redefine it. What they mean to say is not this, but something like "the number of Installed Systems ALLOWED is the number of copies ... purchased".

And then there's the confusion over whether they mean installed or executed.

At this point, with blooies in the opening paragraphs, I'd shoot the lawyer, or suppose that this is deliberately obfuscatory. Here's their GPL person:

4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.

Uh uh. That's limiting the customer's rights to INSTALL (or execute, on one reading) the Software (which happens to be 99.99% GPLed software) they have purchased. The GPL says that you receive that allowance in GPLed software:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form ...

and the GPL also says that you (RH) can't abridge those rights:

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

Hence I would say that RH licence is in violation of GPL in respect of the GPL parts of their distribution. The only possible letout I see is that "the Software" is undefined. If they were to mean by "the Software" "our trademarked non-GPL logos", then that would be OK.

But I don't think they do.

Bill has as good a thinking apparatus as you may ever wish for, in many respects (look him up). That doesn't make him a matehmatical logician (which I am) or a lawyer (which I am not).

Maybe. I don't know. But Bill can argue if you ask him to. I suspect that his contention is that everything on the distro "fits together specially", rather like Microsoft argued that IE was integral to their distro. I disagree with his contention as a matter of fact wrg linking, and library and kernel support. I cannot be so definitive in my opinion wrt his buttertion that the whole thing is INTENDED or DESIGNED to fit together uniquely, which in my opinion is a plausible argument in favur of regarding the ensemble as more than a mere aggregation. Another question is whether the ensemble is GPL ...

Oh, I agree. But is the compilation GPLed!

Peter