Is it permissable to repackage a third-party application as an RPM?

Question

A Linux application we have developed relies upon the presence of licensed, third-party applications to which we defer some internal processing. Our customer has requested that we package our software as RPMs for deployment in their environment --- the question is how best to handle the third-party dependencies which do not provide RPMs.

It seems simplest to repackage the third-party software as an RPM for deployment (sans the license keys which would enable them) and then have our RPMs depend upon those.

So, this question is not about how to package their software, but whether it is permissible to do so. The end customer would still have to purchase a valid license for the software from the vendor, but we'd just be facilitating the installation and configuration for our custom solution via the RPMs we'd build.

Answer 1

The answer to this question lies within the 3rd party applications' licenses. Most likely, they would not let you redistribute their software in this way - but I would ask the vendors on how to deal with this situation.

The way I would handle this is in your RPM's add dependencies on files that are parts of the 3rd party applications. This way your RPMs cannot be installed until the 3rd party stuff is there, and how it gets there is between your customer and that 3rd party.