Java's baby steps toward open source

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Even Redhat enterprise distro is not proprietary

You only need to lock your customers in to your product if, like Microsoft, your unwilling to compete.

The "RHN Code", mentioned in the Redhat Subscription Agreement, only refers to the individual digital key used by Redhat's customers to access, digitally sign and interact with the Redhat services. It is used to identify each individual computer that Redhat agrees to support.

The legal terms and conditions do not effect the terms and conditions of to the customer for any of the source code released under the GPL or any other of the open source licenses. The customer and anybody else are still free to take the RedHat enterprise 3 source code, removing any public Redhat branding/trademark, and release the result under their own brand. Hence the White Box Linux project.
http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/

There is no terms in any of the open source or free licenses which guarantee that support for the result will be provided. Support for open source licensed products is handled by a relationship between the customer and vendor that is entirely separate from the licensing of the source code. It's only by choosing to use only entirely open sourced solutions that you remain free to choose from who you purchase support.

If your a Redhat's Enterprise distribution customer, you remain free to select other vendors and other products, and still take that the Redhat source and, in the words of Fleetwood Mac, "Go your own way". There is no proprietary lock in.

Redhat, as per Suse, Mandrake and the other major Linux distrobutions all support the Linux standard base.
http://www.linuxbase.org/test/registered.html

If you build to the linux standard base interface then your binaries will run on any of the above systems.

Posted by: David Mohring   Posted on: 08/01/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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