Switching to Lineox Enterprise Linux Update Service from Red Hat Network
All Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) variants include one year subscription to Red Hat Network
which offers updates. They also include selected support services, but there is often much less need
for them after the first year. Usually all the needed programs are already installed and services configured
and the only service needed from Red Hat is access to updates.
Red Hat, however charges the same annual price for the next and the following years. For example, if you
purchased RHEL AS standard edition, you will have to pay $1499 per installed system to continue getting updates.
Lineox offers annual update service for only 15 € for a single system and for multiple systems,
the per system price is even lower. Because RHEL and Lineox Enterprise Linux (LEL) are basically the same, switching
the update provider is very simple. Lineox Enterprise Linux and update services are
NOT affiliated with, produced, maintained or supported by Red Hat, Inc. in any way.
If you need other features of Red Hat Network than updates, you might look at, for example,
OC-Manager
from Open Country,
with introductory pricing under $9 per system per month, with volume discounts available.
Legal issues
As a Red Hat customer, you should have read the RHEL subscription agreement and you may have noticed that the
license must be paid for each installed system. This could be interpreted so that you must continue
to pay the license every year you use RHEL. To be on the safe side, lets take a look at the licenses
of the packages RHEL is made of. Besides legal safety, an another objective is to disturb the installed
system as little as possible.
There has been a lot of discussion on the Internet about the repacking and redistribution of the Red
Hat Enterprise Linux products for other purposes. As the source code is provided under the GNU General
Public License (GPL) the issue is that of redistribution of the binaries that Red Hat provides on the
Red Hat Enterprise Linux CDs.
Like many individuals and organisations we have explored the issue in-depth. Based upon Red Hat's
website and information that states
Except for a few components provided by third parties (for example, Java) all the code in Red Hat
products is open source and licensed under the GPL (or a similar license, such as the LGPL).
We recognise that the issue is one of interpretation and application of the GPL and Red
Hat's Enterprise Linux End User License Agreement (EULA). The GPL is specifically concerned with
the source code from which the binaries are built, however Red Hat's EULA
has more specific information concerning the distribution of the binaries.
Red Hat's Enterprise Linux EULA states
With the exception of certain image files identified in Section 2 below, the license
terms for the components permit Customer to copy, modify, and redistribute the
component, in both source code and binary code forms.
and Section 2 of the agreement states
This agreement does not permit Customer to distribute the Software using Red Hat's trademarks.
this is followed by
If Customer makes a commercial redistribution of the Software, unless a separate agreement
with Red Hat is executed or other permission granted, then Customer must modify any files
identified as "REDHAT-LOGOS" and "anaconda-images" to remove all images containing the
"Red Hat" trademark or the "Shadowman" logo.
So if you replace these two files with the ones available from Lineox, you have all the rights
GPL gives you to for example copy and distribute the program packages. And if you replace
also the redhat-release package with Lineox version, you can safely call your former RHEL
system a Lineox Enterprise Linux system and Red Hat has no longer any rights to restrict
your use of the software or claim license fees. Below are the commands that will convert RHEL 3.0 to LEL 3.0 from the legal
viewpoint:
rpm -q redhat-logos && rpm -U --force \
http://www.raimokoski.com/pub/lineox/3.0/i386/os/Lineox/RPMS/redhat-logos-1.1.14.3-1.noarch.rpm
rpm -q anaconda-images && rpm -U --force \
http://www.raimokoski.com/pub/lineox/3.0/i386/os/Lineox/RPMS/anaconda-images-10li-2.RHEL.noarch.rpm
rpm -q redhat-release && rpm -U --force \
http://www.raimokoski.com/pub/lineox/3.0/i386/os/Lineox/RPMS/redhat-release-3AS-7.3.i386.rpm
If you have x86_64 version, replace i386 with x86_64 and use redhat-release-3AS-12.3.x86_64.rpm instead of
i386 version.
RHEL 2.1 doesn't contain anaconda-images package, version numbers naturally differ and
Lineox didn't alter the redhat-release package.
So the conversion of RHEL 2.1 to LEL 2.1 is done with the following command:
rpm -q redhat-logos && rpm -U --force \
http://www.raimokoski.com/pub/lineox/2.1/i386/os/RedHat/RPMS/redhat-logos-1.1.14.3-1.noarch.rpm
Note that the --force parameter is needed when the package you wish to install has the same
or older version and release numbers. These three packages contain only images and text files.
The redhat-release package from Lineox contains /etc/redhat-release file for compatibility reasons,
so there should be absolutely no difference in the operation of your system because of this conversion.
While there is no mention in the RHEL EULA that you should also have RHEL Subsciption License,
the conversion from RHEL to LEL protects you in the case you have multiple systems and want to
keep some of them as RHEL, pay for RHEL Subsciption License for them, for example, because of third party
program support requirements and want to save money by using updates from Lineox for the
rest of the systems.
Note that if you keep some of your systems as RHEL, you should consult Red Hat's agreements
if you have enough installed systems for possible RHN Proxy or Satellite server subscription.
You should also follow Red Hat's instructions how to destroy RHN code from your systems, if needed.
Links
RHEL EULA
RHEL Subscription Agreement
GNU General Public License
Lineox Enterprise Linux 3.0 updates
Lineox Enterprise Linux 3.0 updates are available for free with 30 days delay.
The delay is 60 days for version 2.1 updates.
You may also purchase Lineox Enterprise Linux 3.0 updates for year 2005 and get the rest of the year 2004
for free. If you have multiple systems, you may want to purchase Enterprise updates license which
includes rsync access to both updates and Always Current Lineox Enterprise Linux images for easy
and fast mirroring and this service is not available for free. See the page
Buy support for more information.
