[ILUG] SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional Edition licensing survey results

[Rory Browne]

I detect a note of anger and frustration in the tone of your post.

Do you think this might have anything to do with your social life,
work life, or perhaps your lack of understanding of Irish law.

> However, the next paragraph severely limits that grant -- and I note
> with some annoyance that Rory _didn't frelling bother_ to mention this:
> 
>     The Software is a modular operating system.  Most of the components
>     are open source packages, developed independently, and accompanied
>     by separate license terms.  Your license rights with respect to
>     individual components accompanied by separate license terms are
>     defined by those terms; nothing in this Agreement (including, for
>     example, the "Other License Terms and Restrictions," below) shall
>     restrict, limit, or otherwise affect any rights or obligations You
>     may have, or conditions to which You may be subject, under such
>     license terms.

It's not that I didn't bother. It's simply that this paragraph didn't
support my point of view, so it hadn't really a place in my argument.
I was surprised however to see that you didn't bring it up until now.

 
> Interestingly, even the generous-sounding Novell rights grant cited
> above is non-transferrable!
> 
>     Transfer. This Agreement may not be transferred or assigned without
>     the prior written approval of Novell.
> 
> So, you're allowed to "make and distribute unlimited copies of the
> Software outside Your organization", but then those recipients don't
> enjoy the same rights?  Weird.
You've recieved prior written approval from Novell - in the above
oft-quoted paragraph.

> Interestingly, Novell restricts benchmarking!
Interesting but irrelevent.

> but you folks didn't bother to FRELLING WELL READ THE VERY NEXT
> PARAGRAPH, to find out.
What does 'FRELLING' mean? You've used it more than once, so it can't be a typo.


> Sheesh.
> 
> You can probably predict what's next:  Disk 2 contained these:
> 
> -r--r--r--   1 root root  5381580 Apr 26 14:55 RealPlayer-10.0.3-5.i586.rpm
> -r--r--r--   1 root root 37699961 Apr 26 14:55 acroread-7.0.0-4.i586.rpm
> 
> Disk 5 contained these:
> 
> -r--r--r--   1 root root  6562235 Apr 26 15:03 moneyplex-5.0-193.i586.rpm
> -r--r--r--   1 root root  4825544 Apr 26 15:03 opera-7.54-19.i586.rpm