[plug] Distributing RHEL, SuSE, and Solaris

[Russell S. Albee]

Simon,

Thanks for bringing up the question and causing me to look into it.  I
definitely don't want to do anything illegal, and especially don't want to
jeopardize the PLUG or any of its members.  I remember reading before about
those distributions being able to be distributed, but I wanted to 
double check.
   First, I Am Not A Lawyer (IANAL), but here is what I found out...

Red Hat
-------
This one definitely appears to be distributable from everything I've read:

"...the license terms for the components permit Customer to copy, modify, and
redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms" --
Source:  EULA (http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_rha_eula.html)

The only exception are the Red Hat trademarks, but their trademark guidlines
appear to allow it if its for personnel non-marketing use:

"you may replicate the software contained in ... Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®,
... or copied from a CD originally produced by Red Hat"

"If you are ... a user group, or an individual affiliated with
or employed by any of those organizations, Red Hat grants you a trademark
license with respect to the RED
HAT mark for use with the non-commercial redistribution ... as copied from an
original disk from Red Hat ... .

"If you are an individual or business ... and you only intend to use Red
Hat® Linux® personally or, in the case of a business, internally, in the
original form delivered by Red Hat ... you have permission to apply Red Hat?s
trademarks to all such internal copies."

Source:  Trademark Guidelines and Policies
(http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/trademark1.pdf)

The source files for RHEL4 are freely available for downloaded at:
http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/4/en/os/i386/SRPMS/

SuSE
-----
I don't have the time to look into this one right now since I've spent so much
time on the RHEL issue, but here are links to the ISO's of SuSE Professional
9.3 from the SuSE website:

http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/downloads/ftp/eval.html#australia

Solaris
-------
As you already said you know these can be downloaded freely, but were not sure
about if they can be distributed.  I'm not sure either if they can be
distributed...

But, it would be pretty silly if any of theses that were freely downloadable
were restricted from being able to be distributed (for non-profit 
purposes). It would be extremly hard to prove whether a persons copy 
was downloaded by
them and burned themselves, or if a friend burned them a copy.

Pretty much I think if you are providing copies for friends and not making a
profit from it then your realtively safe and covered.  Its when you start
selling Linux discs on websites and the likes that you have to start worrying.

-Russell

----- Message from plug-request at plug.org.au ---------
> Arent RHES and Suse Professional proprietary (ie, pay for) distros? Id also
> look at the license for Solaris, I know its freely downloadable but is it
> freely distributable?
>
> Simon Scott
> simon at plumtek.com