Free vs. pay versions

[Richard Pieri]

On Aug 22, 2010, at 5:48 PM, Jarod Wilson wrote:
> 
> Sure. But I never said that was the case. I said 'No, everything used
> to build RHEL is released to the public. And its "Red Hat", not Redhat
> or RedHat. :)'. To which I got a reply of "Incorrect". Has absolutely
> nothing to do with ISV certifications, and the only way my statement
> has anything to do with trademarks, is that I was correcting the Red
> Hat name.

Legally, it has everything to do with certification.  Say that you're running Oracle RDBMS on your home-build RHEL system compiled from source code.  Oracle has every legal right to deny you support because you are not running the same OS that Oracle has certified.

Aside: no argument about the name. :)

If I had an RHEL 5.5 disc I'd put it side by side.  In practice, a) I have better things to do with my time, and b) Red Hat has shipped closed source in the past.  Specific example: Red Hat Cluster Suite.  Specific example: RNH Satellite Server.  These are not vague recollections.  These are specific things that I looked for and found no source code because Red Hat had not released it.

I will give you this: it may well be possible to build RHEL v5.5 from SRPMs and get something indistinguishable from the binary distribution.  That is, however, not true for every previous release.

--Rich P.