On Mon, 23 Jun 2014, Paul Robert Marino wrote:

> well what I dont understand here is all of RHEL SRPMs are on a web
> server an can be downloaded if you have an entitlement.
> all you need is
> 1) the CA cert located here /usr/share/rhn/RHNS-CA-CERT on any Red Hat host.
> 2) the entitlement cert from subscription manager winch you can get
> off of access.redhat.com go to Subscriptions -> Subscription
> Management -> UNITs then click on the subscription you would like to
> use. you will see a Download button on the top left side of the
> screen.
> 3) on the page where you downloaded the certificate there is a sub tab
> called Content Set take the URL's listed there and prefix them with
> https://cdn.redhat.com
>
> if you connect with a browser you can see its just a standard yum repo
> which uses the certificates for authentication, so most yum mirroring
> tools will work just fine as long as it can supply the the PKI
> (entitlement) cert to their web server.

Exactly, if it is easy to download SRPM packages from RHN (provided you 
have the necessary funding to pay for various entitlements). Then the 
oft-repeated statement that the reason for not making the SRPMs publicly 
available as before, is to prevent competitors (i.e. Oracle) from being 
able to rebuild RHEL.

Well, if anyone is able to pay for entitlements, it surely is Oracle and 
the likes. So in essence this change only harms community projects who may 
not have the yearly funding for the various entitlements (incl. RHSCL, HA, 
...)

Or what am I missing here ?

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-- dag wieers, [log in to unmask], http://dag.wieers.com/
-- dagit linux solutions, [log in to unmask], http://dagit.net/

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