[SLUG] Another Distro - Suse Licencing

[Adams, Jamie]

> As for SuSE licensing I have never been really sure of what 
> you can and can't do regarding its distribution. SuSE don't 
> seem to release ISO images of their OS other than the SuSE 
> Live Evaluation CD (BTW it's a little bit like Knoppix and by 
> that I mean you just boot from the CD and off you go). You 
> can however (or so I believe) install the latest version of 
> SuSE via NFS for free but as you can imagine that's a little 
> long winded & slow. Also I don't know what you would do here 
> if you had a nice new PC with no operating system on it - how 
> do you start - from the Evaluation CD may be one possiblity 
> or a boot disk??
> 
> A big thread about SuSE licensing issues went off on the York 
> LUG mailing list a few months back and there was mixed views 
> regarding the use of copied SuSE disks. Firstly the definite 
> fact of it is that 98% of the stuff in SuSE can be 
> distributed because of its license (ie: GPL or similar) and 
> SuSE can't restrict anyone else from distributing it without 
> themselves breaking the license agreement of the original 
> authors. One of the YLUG chaps said he worked on the SuSE 
> help desk and you cannot copy and distribute it but another 
> one of the chaps said you could copy it but were not allowed 
> to charge for it due to the licensing of YAST which is SuSE 
> installer & setup tool.

Hmmm. It seems very complicated.

YAST seems to be the crux of the distribution question. YAST in itself
is not free-software, by this I dont mean in cost but that it is closed
source. As SuSe also has other closed source proprietry software on its
cd's it has to try and restrict the distribution of this software. Suse
does, as you said, offer a free edition, however they only allow people
to retrieve it from their own servers. This edition is stripped of the
proprietry software but does include YAST. 

SuSe does not provide download editions of the type that other
distributions do, or ISO's. Wether this is because of the licencing or
because they want to increase sales of boxed sets I dont know. Either
way they are entitled to do this, the GPL does not guaruntee that the
software is free from cost, just that the source must be available for a
cost no more than the cost incurred for making it available (section 3b
of the GPL).

Still, it's quite restrictive, and despite the rambling I am still
unsure of wether it is legal to make copies. A search on Google brings
up lots of contradicting answers. Maybe we should ask SuSe for the
answer on behalf of the group?

> Just as final point on this issue there are lots of vendors 
> on eBay that offer SuSE and they don't seem to have any 
> trouble even though they charge for it (or are they getting 
> out of this by claiming the charge is for the media only and 
> not the actual software?). SuSE as a company must know that 
> this is going on and to be honest eBay are fairly good at 
> clamping down on illegal auctions; one complaint from SuSE 
> (especially if legal action is
> mentioned) and all the vendors auctions would be ended 
> immediately. Furthermore vendors re-submitting their 
> cancelled auction would probably be kicked off eBay. Is this 
> a sign that it's OK to distribute SuSE? Maybe, maybe not, I 
> don't really know.

From looking at the YAST licence I would say that this is almost
certainly against SuSe's policy where the Pro edition is concerned. I
would guess that boxed sets are okay, but not the home burnt ones.

> Jamie: If Darren can't get you a copy of the DVD then tip me 
> a wink and I will do you a copy of the CDs and bring them 
> along to the next meeting.

;)

> On a slightly different note does anyone have a copy of 
> Slackware 9.1 yet? 

Latest version I have is 9.0 :(

Yours Confused.

Jamie
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