[ILUG] SuSE

[Niall O Broin]

On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 02:45:05PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

> That is, of course, the text of the GNU General Public Licence, version 2.  
> Which is the specified licence terms applied by some owners to the 
> included copies of their works.  But not, of course, to others including
> the proprietary works.

Jeez, I hate to say it, but Rick's right here.

> But you have completely failed to answer my question.  Therefore, I
> conclude by default that you _cannot_ cite anywhere that SuSE Linux AG
> has given permission for redistribution of SuSE Professional Edition and
> Personal Edition CD-ROM contents.

Ah but he was given the nod at a reseller conference.

> >> Can you explain to me how it's possible for SuSE Linux AG to grant
> >> third parties permission to freely redistribute Star Office 5.2, VMware,
> >> Opera 6.0, Moneydance, Kylix Open Edition, and IBM Java2, which are
> >> owned by other companies who do not permit such redistribution?

Actually this wouldn't be surprising because

Star Office 5.2 was available free (as in beer). SuSE may well have been
given a license from Sun to distribute - no cost to Sun.

VMware as distributed with SuSE 7.3, and I presume SuSE 8.0, is a "special
deal" whereby you can go to a "special SuSE customer URL" and obtain a
license good for a 30 day evaluation. The fact that the world and its cat
can download VMware from their web site and get a 30 day evaluation license
is neither here nor there.

Opera 6.0 as on the SuSE 8 CD is the advertising supported version which is
again free (as in beer) to download to all and sundry.

Kylix Open Edition is the version of Kylix which is free (as in beer) and
which may only be used to create free (as in speech) software.

I know nothing about Moneydance but AFAIK IBM's JDK is also available on
some kind of free (as in beer) terms and I'd be astonished if this wasn't
the version on the CD. And to be honest, I'd be willing to bet a large bag
of Jelly Bellies that whatever version of Moneydance is included is licensed
in a similar way. (Actually, I just tried to install it - it wanted IBM's
J2RE and there's only so far I'm prepared to go in the interests of science.
However, a quick rpm2cpio later and I was reading the license which speaks
of registered users so I think I'm not far wrong).


> > SuSE's position on this is that the software is essentially being distributed 
> > as demo.
> 
> 1.  You have not cited where SuSE Linux AG allegedly says this.
> 2.  However, more to the immediate point, SuSE Linux AG's "position"
>     would not be particularly relevant for software that is _not theirs_.

No, but as all of this proprietary software is provided in a way which may
make its owners money, I don't imagine they'd care much how SuSE
redistributes it. However, SuSE clearly does not allow the SALE of copies of
their CDs "without authorisation" and good luck getting said authorisation.



Niall