[Sussex] Access to RHEL updates without subscription

[Paul Tansom]

On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 07:42 +0100, Geoffrey J. Teale wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 01:18 +0100, Chris Jones wrote:
> > Hi
> > 
> > On Tue, 31 May, 2005 17:30, Jon Fautley said:
> > > I guess it also depends on your definition of 'distributing'..
> > 
> > You're right that's a slightly trickier situation and IANAL, so pass :)
> > 
> > Cheers,
> 
> Well... 
> 
> ... companies are legal entities, just as human being are (with some
> tricky and annoying exceptions).  Distribution is the act of passing
> software from one legal entity to another.  Employees of a company, when
> doing things that are part of their job, are simply the acting agents of
> the company, so employee's moving software (which is licensed by the
> company) around for the companies use are _not_ distributing it.  
> 
> However, as an outside contractor ever time you give your customer some
> software you _are_ distributing it.
> 
> If your customer licensed the software and you are just installing it
> from them, you are _not_ distributing it.  Key here is that you cannot
> be the person agreeing to licensing conditions, it must be a
> representative of your customer.
> 
> Simple..

Not so simple in practise though. I can't remember the last time I
actually had to agree to any licensing conditions in the act of
installing and RPM or DEB package, just used a command line to install
it and it was done.

Most of my customers expect a system to be provided to them ready to use
as well. This could cause all sorts of complications when it comes to
agreeing to licensing terms during the install process. I spoke to a
system building outfit some time ago that provided their Windows
machines installed to the point of CD key / licensing agreement. At the
time they were still doing a few Windows 98 installs, and the number of
fixes and updates that weren't installed as result is pretty large. It
is no wonder so many Windows machines are insecure when they are
provided with so many security updates not installed!

With the systems I install, which is more of a sideline to support for
existing customers, the machine is required to be installed onto the
desktop and configured for their network. This generally includes
installing office suites, utilities (acrobat, zip genius, sometimes vnc)
and antivirus as well as configuring the email, web and network setting
where necessary. The track back of license agreements in this case is a
nightmare and the actual proof issue would be very difficult to show on
either side of any court case!

Of course this particular instance is confused further by the fact that
the machine was fully entitled to have the software installed, it just
didn't during the period of the RHN subscription. Secondly, the software
in question is actually the source code to a binary already installed
through the RHN. Of course both binary and source are in RPM format, so
this adds to the complexity of the situation!!

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/