[Lancaster] Download of latest version of SUSE Linux

[Martyn Welch]

Ken Hough wrote:

> The idea that "SuSE is the one and only legally safe,
> Microsoft endorsed GNU/Linux system, the rest are dangerous and can get
> you into an intellectual property law court case" can work ONLY if people 
> remain in ignorance of Linux and the concept of open source software.
> 

Or if a few of the big proprietary players manage to screw up the patent 
  laws enough that Linux becomes a complete no-go.

> History shows that power is maximised by keeping populations in ignorance and 
> fear. Microsoft know this very well.
> 
> Remember the SCO case? Basically, SCO were trying to claim intellectual 
> property rights over parts of the Linux kernel code. They were eventually 
> laughed out of court. Guess who was found to have funded SCO?
> 

Actually that case is still on going. They tried to claim 2 things:

1) They owned the copyrights to Unix sysV.

Novell argued this point and have all but won.

2) Portions of Unix sysV had been copied into Linux verbatim.

They have not yet managed to show any substantial code that has been 
copied from Unix sysV. Most of the code that they have tried to claim I 
believe has been shown to have come from BSD and as a result isn't a 
problem. As I understand it, there was a case quite a few years back 
that resolved any issues that stood between Unix sysV and BSD.

> The recent spate of 'netbook' computers running Linux is perhaps the best 
> advertising so far for Linux. The fact that Microsoft have been forced to 
> respond by allowing XP to continue to be used on such machines is IMHO, bound 
> to make Joe Bloggs think a bit and perhaps begin to see that the Microsoft 
> line is rubbish!.
> 

It's a shame that the version of Linux on most of these machines is 
quite limited, by which I mean that the Xandros based OS on the Asus EEE 
PC only provides a repository for limited security updates and nothing 
more. No nice package manager with tonnes of extra packages. Such a 
shame, but I can understand that they don't want the burden of fielding 
support queries for every possible Linux package.

Martyn