Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4498 mails)

[Alex Daniloff <alex@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello SuSE folkz,
I'm still reading through published materials on recently announced M$ and 
Novell "cooperation". Siting with the devil M$ historically has had a short 
time gain and disastrous consequences in a long run.
I have this moral and business dilemma over this issue:
Part of my money will essentially go to M$ every time I buy boxed version of 
SuSE. I purchase and include full boxed SuSE distributions every time I 
dispatch my hardware / software solutions to my customers. So, now I will 
essentially pay a "ransom" to M$ for their "promise" not to sue me, if I'm 
using SuSE for non-commercial purposes. And I'm still open to potential M$ 
mitigations when I develop my commercial applications and services using SuSE 
or other distributions as a core platform.
Switching to other, not tainted by M$, distributions means that I have to 
migrate and re-train all my customers without any monetary compensations for 
me.
The major dilemma is to funnel money to M$ for each purchased box of SuSE or
suffer financial loses in migrating and retraining my clientele to another 
distribution.

Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome,

Alex