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Can you run a commerical website off of a Fedora box?

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:10 am
by themurph
I got into a debate with a friend about FC vs RHE

He stated that it was technically "illegal" to run a pay-to-play website (say something like http://www.salesforce.com ) off a FC box.

I can't imagine that he is correct, but I couldn't find any references via google (or via the fedora EULA) to prove either side.

I admit I'm pretty naive when it coes to open source licensing.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:36 am
by RobertGonzalez
Ask him if he knows how many web hosts at the moment use Fedora Core as their OS for all their accounts. Which happen to be commercial. There is nothing stopping you from using any Linux distro for some type of commercial use. The license allows its use, alteration and redistribution. No holds barred if you follow the license, which does not disallow commercial use.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:41 am
by AKA Panama Jack
Your friend doesn't know what he is talking about. :D

We have been runnning commercial servers off Fedora for years.

The only reason to go RHE is if you want their support. If you use FC you are basically on your own when it comes to support.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:44 am
by Benjamin
Maybe he works for the dirty sco group. Ick

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:45 am
by RobertGonzalez
Thanks PJ. Forgot to mention that. FC has absolutely no support outside the FC community. RHE has available RH support for the enterprise version, but they also offer a no support version of RHE without all of the commercial grade utilities.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:48 am
by Weirdan
First, I'm not a lawyer
fedora core EULA wrote: 1. The Software. Fedora Core (the %u201CSoftware%u201D) is a modular Linux operating system consisting of hundreds of software components. The end user license agreement for each component is located in the component's source code. With the exception of certain image files containing the Fedora trademark identified in Section 2 below, the license terms for the components permit User to copy, modify, and redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms. This agreement does not limit User's rights under, or grant User rights that supersede, the license terms of any particular component.
in a typical installation, site would be served by Apache+PHP+MySQL
PHP License 3.0 wrote: Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, is permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
[none of these conditions deny your right to sell content produced by PHP]
Apache License wrote: Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work,
I'm not sure about the meaning of 'patent license', but it's the only passage that explicitely allows you to use apache software. Since most of the websites (be it commercial or not) use Apache, I guess it's perfectly legal.

MySQL is distributed under GPL.
MySQL licensing page wrote: * If you are developing and distributing open source applications under the GPL License, then you are free to use MySQL under the GPL License. More Info ยป
So if you license the source code of your site under GPL you're free to use MySQL under GPL. Since GPL does not force you to distribute your work, you're free to use MySQL on your site if you don't distribute your site's source code.

So, technically, it's legal to use FC+Apache+PHP+MySQL to run commercial site.

Re: Can you run a commerical website off of a Fedora box?

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 1:07 am
by Christopher
themurph wrote:He stated that it was technically "illegal" to run a pay-to-play website (say something like http://www.salesforce.com ) off a FC box.
Typical Windows guy ... thinks licenses only take away rights ... and speaking of that, would you run a commercial website (or any business computing) on an operating system that the vendor could revoke your license at any time for a multitude of fine print reasons?

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:14 am
by themurph
"The only reason to go RHE is if you want their support. If you use FC you are basically on your own when it comes to support."
That's the impression I had always gotten about FC/RHE.

Thanks for all the inupt, guys :)