Can I use Red Hat AMQ 7.7 in production without license/support subscription

Question

Can I use Red Hat AMQ 7.7 in production without license or support subscription? And what's the difference between JBoss AMQ and Red Hat AMQ?

Answer 1

All the projects which are part of Red Hat AMQ have open source licenses so there is no problem with building and using them in production. I don't believe there is anything legally stopping you from using any such version without support. Without a valid subscription you won't be able to use the specific bits distributed by Red Hat. Without support and easy access to the bits I don't really see why you would use Red Hat AMQ as those are arguably the two largest benefits. You could easily just use ActiveMQ Artemis directly instead.

At the end of the day, I am not a lawyer, and I do not represent Red Hat. I strongly recommend that you discuss the issue with Red Hat directly.

Red Hat AMQ and JBoss AMQ are the same thing. The "JBoss" branding was used prior to the most recent AMQ releases.

Answer 2

If you want to use AMQ and not to pay for a subscription you can use Apache Artemis. All RH products have a free (as in beer) version, the difference is the RH support and the quality control (better in RH buildings IMHO)

Answer 3

The pretty much only scenario you may lawfully get and use the RH products on your prod environment without an active subscription is when you got the RH product via a valid subscription first. Then, once the subscription expired you can continue using the product without subscription as long as no other active RH subscriptions in your organisation (aka "all or nothing rule" Appendix 1, section 1.2 of the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement).

This case is covered in the Red Hat subscription model FAQ under "What if a subscription is not renewed?".

You can, of course, obtain and use the Apache ActiveMQ products as a free alternative with a similar functionality or assemble your own version of the software from the Apache source code which is publicly available.
However, the RH holds the rights on their product's binaries aka "bits footprints" and the subscription is needed if you want using them on a prod or non prod environment.

Now, regarding the sources from RH and the licence...
If you have a valid Red Hat (RH) support subscription, you can download the RH AMQ sources from the RH web site. It's important to note that the Apache ActiveMQ repository does not contain the exact sources used by RH to build their binaries. The RH sources come with an open source license specified, allowing distribution and other actions. However, there's a catch: if you choose to distribute these RH sources, you risk losing your subscription benefits.
That's the reason why an official public clone of the RH AMQ repository is not available. However, there are some anonymous repositories on GitHub that might have been created by individuals who have access to the RH sources through their subscription. These individuals cannot reveal their identities because doing so would lead to the termination of their RH subscription. It's important to note that relying on these anonymous repositories to build your production environment is not advisable from a security perspective.

Please note that I am not affiliated with RH in any manner, nor am I endorsing their approach of commercialising open-source products. The information I am providing is based on my understanding of the answers obtained from RH support. Additionally, it's important to acknowledge that RH policies may vary from one country to another in order to comply with local laws and regulations.