[ILUG] SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional Edition licensing survey results

[Niall Walsh]

Rory Browne wrote:

>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.
>
>  
>
I think Rick's anger and frustation is understandable, all seems to have 
panned out as he claimed and lots of bytes have been flung around which 
probably could have been saved had someone included all the relevant 
parts of Suse's agreement, not just the one snip they liked the look of.

>>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.
>
>  
>
So you admit that you only introduced evidence to suit you case!   Your 
surprise at Rick not bringing it up before now surprises me, as Rick 
made it clear he had yet to see a full agreement, just what had been 
included in this thread.

>>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.
>
>  
>
You sure?   Is the agreement not on of the "individual components 
accompanied by separate license terms"?   Doesn't the GPL have to 
expressely make itself reidstributable?

>>Interestingly, Novell restricts benchmarking!
>>    
>>
>Interesting but irrelevent.
>
>  
>
Irrelevant to you in your wishes to copy/redistribute Suse cds, I don't 
think it's irrelevant at all, I'd actually chalk it up as a reason to 
stay away from Suse.   The applicability of these terms would be 
questionable though?   Presumably I could run a hard disk benchmark on a 
Suse kernel from 9.3 as I would simply be testing Free software 
(probably all GPL/LGPL) which Suse cannot place extra restrictions on?

>>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.
>
>  
>
I suspect it is in deference to the delicate nature of anyone reading.   
I suspect RELL should be closer to ACK, just a different vowel!  I can't 
imagine that anyone would learn such a word for the first time on this 
mailing list though ...

>>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
>>    
>>
So anyone with Suse 9.3 installed care to put us out of our misery?   
Extract these rpms and see what the licenses have to say!

Presumably the option is still wide open to just remove these few rpms 
(rewriting the equivalent of Package files perhaps) to create a 
semi-redistributable Suse (semi as the non-transferable licence suggests 
it may be only redistributable to the original puchaser)?

Niall Walsh