Fwd: Possible GPL violation by Red Hat/Dell alliance

[Nathan Meyers]

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 12:33:57PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
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> On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 05:36:51PM -0500, GNU/Linux :-) wrote:
> > it also happends that I do know what I talk about of the profesional
> > edition of Redhat cause I was talking one hour with Marisa Keller 
> 
> I'm sorry, but no, you don't know what you're talking about.  What
> you're talking about is Red Hat Advanced Server Edition:
> 
>   http://www.redhat.com/software/advancedserver/
> 
> > clusters(sense I love making beowulfs), I asked them if I could get the
> > Clustering monitor they were displaying in the booth as example for
> > their Cluster software, they told me that I can only get it in the
> > profesional edition and that it was a in house software, not 3rd party.
> >  No I don't know the name sense I can't download it cause I can only get
> > it in the profesional edition ;-)
> 
> No, that's wrong.  You can only get *binaries* by buying advanced
> server.  You can, however, download the source code from their FTP
> server, and compile it yourself.
> 
> It's on ftp.redhat.com:
> 
>   /pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/2.1AS/en/os/i386/SRPMS
> 
> It's probably also on at least some of their mirrors.  The software
> you speak of is Red Hat Cluster Manager, and the team that is working
> on it is made up primarily of former Mission Critical Linux employees.
> It is based on MCL's Kimberlite open-source version of Convolo
> clustering software.

And compiling, selling, and supporting binaries is at the dead-center of
open source business models pushed by the likes of Eric Raymond - and,
for that matter, by GPL purists like RMS. Whoa... is RedHat guilty of
taking those business models seriously?

Nathan Meyers
nmeyers at javalinux.net