[ILUG] SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional Edition licensing survey results

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Gareth Eason (bigbro at skynet.ie):

Sincere apologies for having beaten the subject to death, Gareth.

> My eyes are now bleeding from reading this thread. For the first time
> I'm actually beginning to see why businesses stay the
> f[random_characters]k away from free software in many cases... 

Well, as annoying as free / open source software licensing issues can
be, proprietary ones are _miles_ worse.  The only difference is that
those are generally shuffled off to lawyers in padded-wall rooms.

> I think both sides have good arguments and not being a lawyer myself I
> can't say which one is correct, if any.

I would imagine it would suffice to read the licences that say things
like -- and I quote verbatim, including capital letters: "REDISTRIBUTION
NOT PERMITTED" 

That's RealPlayer -- and I can't imagine anything could make the matter
more starkly clear, short of subpoenas.

But if you really think you "can't say which one is correct", I guess
I believe you.