Hosting Concept Legality

itshim

Greetings,

I am currently designing a web hosting company’s website. I was asked to create the website and look into the legality of their concept.

Their hosting platform was created using open source technology, Linux OS, Apache web server, MySQL database server, and PHP scripting language. Their concept is to offer for download, the same versions of Apache, MySQL, and PHP that they are currently running, so users may create a home development environment for testing. They also want to offer the documentation and manuals for download and use on their site.

I have read through the licensing agreements, and other than certain restrictions like also offering the source code, and licensing agreements I do not see anything that would prevent them from doing this. Their users of course will not be using these downloads for production use, because the will be using the software provided by the hosting company.

I was just wondering if this is a legitimate concept and if anyone knows of legal problems that might arise.

Thank you for your help.
Itshim

drawmack

when a client asks me about legality of things I usually refer them to a lawyer and explain that I am a programmer and therefor not qualified to give out legal advice.

redrabbit

Originally posted by drawmack
when a client asks me about legality of things I usually refer them to a lawyer and explain that I am a programmer and therefor not qualified to give out legal advice.

That's probably the best. If you say its fine for them to do whatever they want to, and they get sued, then you will be in trouble as you provided them with the advice.

Elizabeth

Hmm, I too am not a lawyer, but I believe you could set up your hosting site to be official (or unofficial) mirror sites for downloading the 3 components - MySQL, PHP & Apache. Then, I believe you could just maintain your current version(s) by not doing the rsync to get the latest version available. This would probably increase the traffic to the site tho- but might be good free advertising for the company.

PHP Mirror site info
Apache Mirror site info
MySQL mirror site info

hth-
-Elizabeth

laserlight

I was just wondering if this is a legitimate concept and if anyone knows of legal problems that might arise.

Effectively the company's concept is just becoming a mirror site for some software licensed under various Open Source licenses.

Given that by definition such licenses "shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources" and "shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale", and "must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor", it sounds like there should not be any legal issues as long as care is taken to fulfill the conditions of the licenses, especially in the case of MySQL and its 'FOSS License Exception'.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice/opinion.

itshim

I just wanted to thank everyone who replied.

Your suggestions are very helpful.

Itshim