[wplug] Red Hat AS/ES (was Building redhat from source)

[Bob Schmertz]

On Fri, 2003-05-23 at 16:46, Vanco, Donald wrote:
> It's also worth noting that there are a bunch of folks hoping to circumvent
> the cost of the RH EL product line by compiling the entire distro from
> sources.  Sadly, it appears that these distros are not quite fully "self
> hosting" - builds of some portions of GNOME and things like that fail...
> 
> My personal experiences with building updates to AS from src rpms bears that
> out - you really need a licensed, "full" install to get things to build
> without flaming hoops and spinning plates on sticks....
> 

I'm curious as to how recompiling the distro of Free Software will allow
someone to have a copy of ES that they couldn't have otherwise.

So far I haven't been able to figure out what the real deal is with Red
Hat Advanced Server (and now Enterprise Server and all the rest).  Is it
illegal to copy the ISOs?  If so, how can they do that when all or
nearly all of the software is free, much of it GPL'ed?  If not, why
aren't there RHAS/ES ISOs floating around on the Net, and how come none
of the update mirrors carry update RPMs for the "commercial" offerings?

-- 
Cheers,
Bob Schmertz