If Linux is supposed to be free and Red Hat charge for support for RHEL, why is it not possible to download and install it for free?

This isn't a dig at Red Hat, I just want to know. I've used Fedora for a while but wanted to try out RHEL to see how it differs from Fedora and was surprised to that the cheapest subscription is $80. I'm aware that Fedora is meant to be the 'free version', but I still don't get how Red Hat can get away with not doing RHEL for free.

In Open-Source software, there is no presumption that anything will be free of cost. The licenses speak only to freedom of use.

Anyone producing or selling ANYTHING has every right to charge money for it----I'm not sure that I can think of an exception. Perhaps after the brain finishes booting........Just go to e-bay and look at all the people selling Ubuntu...

If you do not want to pay for RHEL:
1. Use something else
2. Get CentOS (free clone, and of course no support from RedHat.)

Give the GPL a good read (where does it say you can't sell Linux?), then try CentOS.

CentOS is compiled from same source packages that Red Hat uses to compile RHEL. They are binary compatible, so any package that you install will behave absolutely the same on both distro's. CentOS is freely downloadable and can be even converted to RHEL and vice versa.

...which it is (but you've got to know what Linux is and that there are two meanings of free at work here)...

...which they do...

Because RedHat haven't chosen to make that offer.

RedHat is not Linux and Linux is not RedHat. In Redhat, you will get much that is not 'Linux', 'Linux' being, if anything, an operating system kernel. Apart from the fact that in the delivery to you there are costs, and nothing in the GPL can compel them to do that for free, you also point out that there is support and RedHat can charge for that.

RedHat's offer to you also includes intellectual property and if you don't feel that their offer represents good value, well, there are other options.

I'm still not getting what your problem with this is. They take stuff that is free, bundle other stuff with it, including support, and sell it.

If you check their site, it IS possible to download and install any version of RHEL for free. What you DON'T get for free is updates and support...which is what they charge for.
CentOS is the 'free' version of RedHat enterprise. Fedora is RedHat based. Same thing with openSUSE vs. SUSE Enterprise...one is supported from SUSE/Novell, the other is community supported.

If you don't understand why, consider Oracle. If they tried to support EVERY version of Linux out there, they couldn't...too many variables. Rolling out a patch would take forever (not that it's quick now...). The 'open' versions often update once or twice a year (openSUSE 11.0 to 11.2???). The supported ones work with Oracle, to make sure it can be supported in the field. Such development efforts cost money on both sides of things, but pay off when they can sell support and licenses to folks in production environments. CentOS may be fine for a test box....but if you call Oracle for support on it, good luck.

That was my point, I couldn't find that anywhere. I understand Opensource, Free Software Movement, GNU, etc and am aware of the difference between freedom and free, blah blah blah.
My questioning this is that as far as I know RHEL uses software that has been licensed to be freely available(free as in free beer), but RHEL is not freely available. I don't have a problem with it - just want to understand it exactly. It's just a question, not wanting to start World War 3.

Samael;
Please relax---no one said anything hostile to you!!

Once again, the licensing does not typically talk about the SW being "free as in beer". The various OpenSource licenses really have nothing to do with cost.

Tbone says that it is "possible" to get RHEL free of cost---that does not mean that RedHat will make it easy. Keep looking or wait for someone who knows where it is to cruise by here.

More to the point, I would go to various Linux sites (or here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ ) and read the licenses.

Did you check out CentOS like a bunch of us recommended?

http://www.redhat.com. Click the "Downloads" button at the top. Want to download the OS? Get a free 30 day support key, and download away. After 30 days, you either can pay up and continue support/updates, use it without support, or remove it and load something community supported.
Sorry, but again, it IS freely available. There's nothing stopping you from getting it or loading it for free. RH is not stopping you from getting the source code, either.

Cheers TB0ne that makes more sense to me, I was initially a little put out when I was prompted to type in a code during the installation process but knowing that you can use without support after 30 days it makes more sense.

Thanks for the responses pixellany, snowpine and rest of you. I've been reading through a little of centos.org. I knew of the distro but didn't actually know any specifics about it so it's been interesting.

The GPL says if they take anybody else's work and make changes to it and distribute it (which they are doing with RHEL) then they must distribute their changes as well. You can download all the RHEL source RPMs from ftp.redhat.com and compile everything yourself if you want, which I believe is how CentOS does their thing.

Surely support actually means support + updates?

Actually, even -that- would be weird. After 30 days can't you simply fetch the source rpms and turn them into packages.. thus also having access to updates? Perhaps I'm missing something :-/

Yes, but it is time consuming, so if you are not going to pay them for support just convert to CentOS and you will get those same packages already compiled :-D.