How can licenses be applied to have two parallel versions of software, one freely available and another commercial, like Red Hat has done with it's version of Linux? Also, can snippets of code be freely ported from one to the other or must it be designed separately?
+2
A:
From what I understand, the source code for Redhat Enterprise is freely available, but the binaries (and of course, support) are not. So, you can built RHE yourself at no cost, but only if you know how to build it and want to support it yourself.
Airjoe
2010-04-13 20:59:12
Ah, so both of them are actually open-source. I guess that means there's no problem with porting code from one to the other.
James P.
2010-04-13 21:03:33
A:
After some searching, here's a clue about what Red Hat has done with respect to their Enterprise version. According to the author of the article, the subscription agreement apparently covers the distribution rights of binary files.
http://ianmurdock.com/linux/red-hat-enterprise-linux-is-proprietary/
James P.
2010-04-14 00:12:11