[ILUG] SuSE redistribution

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Rory Browne (rory.browne at gmail.com):

> You're missing the point. Under Irish law(and for that matter most
> national laws), when you buy software for a particular purpose(in this
> case redistributing without receiving consideration), and it turns out
> that that redistributing, aforementioned software is illegal, then
> that would be a violation of Irelands contract law.

I doubt that you are buying this shrink-wrapped, boxed-set software for
purposes of redistribution -- or that the product literature, looked at
attentively, will turn out to promise that right.

People who've claimed they were promised that right in the past by
Novell / SUSE Linux AG have turn out, upon examination, to have gotten
it wrong.  (SUSE representatives have also gotten matters wrong a few
times.)

> Why would  Novell leave themselves open to being sued, particularly if
> as you claim, they had teething probems with SuSE 9.1. Why would they
> repeat their mistakes with 9.3?

I don't "claim they had teething problems" with 9.1.  I pointed out that
some components very obviously lacked permission from their owners to
redistribute -- and I'm now pointing out that those EXACT SAME
components are still present, with no reason cited to think the firms in
question have changed their minds, and plenty of reason to think they
haven't.

> No offense Rick, but I'd rather trust Novells team of lawyers to look
> after their own backs, than to take the word of someone from a mailing
> list.

This would have been a relevant observation, IF ONLY I'D ASKED YOU TO
TAKE MY WORD FOR ANYTHING.  And of course I haven't.  So, please lose
the cheesy and transparent sophistry.  It's an insult to our
intelligence.


> > One reason I care about the question:  Open source wasn't built by
> > ripping off proprietary software companies.  I see no reason why we
> > should start now.  Besides, it's just an interesting factual question.
> 
> SuSE isn't open-source AFAIK. You can't redistribute it for a fee. It
> is a propriatory Operating System, that consists mostly of Open-Source
> components.

Excuse me, but you seem to be spectacularly missing my point:  The way
we built the world of open source software was _not_ by ripping off the
rights of proprietary software firms, including those who ship their
codebases for Linux.  If we didn't like licences, our remedy was NOT to 
violate them, but rather to use other alternatives (or nothing at all) 
while working on creating something better.