I'm somewhat confused by the RHEL licensing scheme. It seems that Red Hat wants to force it's customers to a minimal subscription level. But what if my client is shifting to Linux because he wants to save money? The current prices at Red Hat are quite expensive, especially considering that they are yearly. Of course, you don't have the problem of cals under Red Hat, which makes it less expensive in situations, but just to clear my confusion, can I buy RHEL for a year with a subscription and then continue using it after that year? I know that I won't be able to access the Red Hat Network after my license is terminated, but is it legal to continue using RHEL after your license has expired since you are actually paying for support and patches and not for the software itself? Also, I know that Red Hat's products are ultimately open-source and that some projects such as the WhiteBox project have taken Red Hat's source and compiled it into a distribution that is almost identical to Red Hat's Enterprise solution. But does Red Hat makes it's patches freely downloadable or release the source code for them? Thank you for your time.

As far as I can tell, it is legal to continue using Red Hat after your year is up. It is also legal to purchase one package and use it on multiple servers while only paying for support for one server.

It is not legal to distribute it with the Red Hat logos included. And you can't get support for any servers that you are not paying for.

As for patches, etc. I'm not sure what the situation outside of your support agreement is.

If you want Red Hat Enterprise without the cost, why not look at whitebox linux ?

Hi LinuxGeek,

I'm fairly certain that you cannot purchase one copy of Red Hat Enterprise linux and run it on multiple servers. This would definetely be a violation of the license agreement.
Also, you cannot purchase and register one copy and use it to obtain package and kernel updates and apply them to other usubscribed servers. This is also a violation.
To stay out of possible legal trouble, you should purchase a copy for each server and register each product ID. After the subscription expires, you do not have to renew it. You can continue to run it as long as you want. As you know, the Red Hat Enterprise kernel has been optimized by Red Hat.
You cannot obtain kernel updates anywhere, but Red Hat Network. Although you can optain package updates from other sites, the updates are not back ported. Red Hat back ports all package updates when necessary to insure no unwanted side effects. You should get your package updates from Red Hat Network unless you really know what you're doing. Yes, Red Hat is a bit expensive, but it's worth it in certain circumstances. If you're running mission critical Oracle databases, then you should keep your servers subscribed. Oracle is certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
If you're not running mission critical Oracle databases, then I would go with another Linux distribution.

Thanks a lot for your feedback. What I had in mind was that my client buys Red Hat Enterprise ES with support for a year. If Red Hat supplies their patches on the net and they are downloadable, I could advise my client to stop his subscription after a year. I would then be responsible for supporting it. I have RHCEs with me that can offer a fairly good level of support and it would be less expensive than even the "Basic Support" level from Red Hat. My customer wants the best price they can get and after finding out that Red Hat wasn't exactly what he considered cheap, I'm trying to think of a way to minimize the price while still running Red Hat.