Red Hat UBI Licensing
Overview: Why UBI is redistributable¶
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has an end user license agreement (EULA) that prohibits the redistribution of RHEL, including the RPMs and container images. This was necessary to ensure that customers had a subscription for every active RHEL server, which allowed Red Hat support to quickly provide help.
However, the Universal Base Image (UBI) has a different EULA that allows users to redistribute applications built on it, whether open source or proprietary, wherever they want. The entitlement for UBI comes from the host, not the container image, which works well in cloud-based and developer environments where containers are not always run on supported container hosts.
These points were derived from a Red Hat article discussing what UBI provides.
Frame of understanding¶
1. Does UBI let me distribute my container images anywhere I want?¶
TL;DR – Building on UBI means Red Hat is never going to tell you where or how you can distribute your images. You can distribute your images wherever and however you like.
2. Can I add RHEL packages if something is missing from UBI?¶
TL;DR – It depends. If you join the Red Hat Partner Connect Program and certify a container, yes – for more information see: Red Hat Extends Partner Offerings to Drive Open Hybrid Cloud Innovation. But, if you’re not part of that program, once you add RHEL RPMs onto a UBI image, you are back to redistributing content released under the Red Hat Enterprise Linux end user license. If you are a paying Red Hat customer, this would break the agreement between you and Red Hat. Furthermore receivers of these images wouldn’t receive updates for the RPMs you added unless they have Red Hat subscriptions. This puts those end users without Red Hat subscriptions in a bad place.
3. Is the UBI License Open Source?¶
TL:DR – UBI is not a software license, it’s an end user license agreement (EULA) for Red Hat trademarks embedded in our RPM content.
What’s the difference between the UBI EULA and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux EULA?¶
TL;DR – the the UBI EULA let’s you redistribute the UBI base image and RPMs, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux one does not.
Additional Resources:¶
Created : 9 mai 2023