Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed

By William Ball

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Lead Authors
  • About the Contributing Authors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • I. Red Hat Linux Installation and User Services
  • Chapter 1. Introduction to Red Hat Linux
    • Advantages of Linux
    • The Magic of Red Hat Linux
    • Red Hat Linux Compared to Other Linux Distributions
    • What's New in Red Hat and the Linux Kernel?
    • Copyright and Warranty
    • Where to Get Red Hat Linux
    • System Requirements
    • Summary
  • Chapter 2. Installation of Your Red Hat System
  • Chapter 3. LILO and Other Boot Managers
  • Chapter 4. Configuring the X Window System, Version 11
  • Chapter 5. Window Managers
  • Chapter 6. Connecting to the Internet
  • Chapter 7. IRC, ICQ, and Chat Clients
  • Chapter 8. Using Multimedia and Graphics Clients
  • II. Configuring Services
  • Chapter 9. System Startup and Shutdown
  • Chapter 10. SMTP and Protocols
  • Chapter 11. FTP
  • Chapter 12. Apache Server
  • Chapter 13. Internet News
  • Chapter 14. Domain Name Service and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
  • Chapter 15. NIS: Network Information Service
  • Chapter 16. NFS: Network Filesystem
  • Chapter 17. Samba
  • III. System Administration and Management
  • Chapter 18. Linux Filesystems, Disks, and Other Devices
  • Chapter 19. Printing with Linux
  • Chapter 20. TCP/IP Network Management
  • Chapter 21. Linux System Administration
  • Chapter 22. Backup and Restore
  • Chapter 23. System Security
  • IV. Red Hat Development and Productivity
  • Chapter 24. Linux C/C++ Programming Tools
  • Chapter 25. Shell Scripting
  • Chapter 26. Automating Tasks
  • Chapter 27. Configuring and Building Kernels
  • Chapter 28. Emulators, Tools, and Window Clients
  • V. Appendixes
  • A. The Linux Documentation Project
  • B. Top Linux Commands and Utilities
  • C. The GNU General Public License
  • D. Red Hat Linux RPM Package Listings

Copyright and Warranty

Red Hat Linux is copyrighted under the GNU General Public License. This section doesn't include the entire license nor its variants, but it does highlight a few items. Basically, the license provides three things:

1. The original author retains the copyright.
2. Others can do with the software what they want, including modifying it, basing other programs on it, and redistributing or reselling it. The software can even be sold for a profit. The source code must accompany the program.
3. The copyright cannot be restricted down the line. This means that if you sell a product for one dollar, the person you sold it to can change it in any way (or not even change it at all) and sell it to a second person for $10—or give it away at no charge to a thousand people.

Why have such unique licensing? The original Linux software authors didn't intend to make money from the software. It was intended to be freely available to everyone, without warranty. That is correct; there is no warranty. Does this mean you are left out in the cold when you have problems? Of course it doesn't. Numerous resources, including this book, newsgroups, and the Web, are available to assist you. What the no-warranty provision does do is provide the programmers the ability to release software at no cost without the fear of liability. Granted, this lack of liability is a two-edged sword, but it is the simplest method for providing freely available software.

There are several variants of the GNU General Public License. The first is the GNU GPL, a free software license and a copyleft license recommended for most software. Another is the GNU Lesser Public License, a free software license that permits linking with non-free modules, but recommended by the FSF only under special circumstances. There is also the license of Guile, the GNU GPL with blanket permission to link with non-free software (and also recommended by the FSF only under special circumstances).

Open Source Software and Licensing

Open Source licenses are also numerous variants of software licensing that fall under the category of Open Source software. These include the software license for the X Window System, the original and modified BSD UNIX licenses, and the software license for the Apache Web browser. You'll find a copy of the GNU GPL listed in this book; you'll definitely find copies of others included on this book's CD-ROM! (Hint: Look under the /usr/share/doc directory in each package directory!)

For more information regarding software licensing, browse to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html. If you plan to develop software for Linux and would like to retain copyright but would like to share the source code with others, consider using the GNU GPL. You can also assign the rights to the software to the Free Software Foundation. For an interesting read about copyright and free software, browse to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html, and read Richard M. Stallman's treatise "Why software should not have owners."

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