This comes up now and then and should be in a FAQ somewhere, based on the number of incorrect responses I see.
Like yours, I believe.
RHEL is covered under the GPL.
No. *Most* of RHEL is covered under the GPL, but parts of it are not. The Red Hat name, the Shadowman logo, and others are trademarked property of Red Hat which, like any other trademarked material, you are not allowed to use or distribute in any way without their permission.
For example, this is why Cheapbytes sold CD's for years which were made from the Red Hat Linux ISO's but which were sold as "Pink Tie Linux"... to avoid problems with the trademarks. This is also why WBEL and others take pains to remove said trademarked material before distributing.
The GPL covers distributing, copying, and modifying - but not running.
Yes. Note, however, that this neat little rationalization is answered by the following text quoted from the GPL [1]: "It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims."
[1] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Agreement. This license says that if you *run* RHEL you must pay for - at a minimum - the RHN. Unfortunately, you cannot just purchase RHN for ES/AS (which is extremely convenient for RH).
It is not "convenient"... it is a conscious business decision that they have made, whose purpose it is to allow them to make money. You don't like their decisions, don't use their products. But that does not make finding or creating a way around those decisions an ethically correct behavior.
So that being said, you can give away as many copies as you like and you can install as many copies as you like - but you can only run the copies you have paid for. If you receive a copy of RHEL from someone other then RH, the RH EULA is not in play. You can run it, but you won't have updates/support.
If you do that, you are infringing on trademarks and Red Hat's intellectual property. I don't give a damn what you think of them, that's *still* theft or abuse of intellectual property, and where I come from that is *not* acceptable. Your answer and recommendation are incorrect unless you can prove otherwise.
Cheers,
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
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