On Saturday 22 November 2003 12:19 am, LAW999 wrote: <snipped>
If a company selling software is of the opinion that a practice is in breach of its licence or that it would not like others to follow, users should respect that. Giving away "free" a version of SuSE linux with commercial offerings is not in the spirit of the terms under which SuSE supplied its Linux distribution. Under such circumstances an agreement should be sought SuSE, which would not act unreasonably.
Just my 0.02p worth.
LW999
If it's so, then you have to respect SCO's opinion and buy a license to use Linux directly from them. Company opinion or "spirit of the terms" has to be legally outlined in the software license itself. If it hasn't been done properly, then it's just a private opinion without legal merits. All license ambiguities and uncertainties go against the licensor not the licensee. In case with YaST - there are limitations on its usage if and only if you are reselling SuSE distribution for profit. If you give it away for free, then you're not bound by these limitations. That is why a business schema when you optionally install SuSE, Red Hat or other distro for free, and then sell a client your commercial software is perfectly legal. Because your profit comes not from selling SuSE or Red Hat Linux distribution, but your software which is independent of YaST, other proprietary installation tools, and distribution itself. It can be installed on Red Hat, Debian and other distros with the same functionality. You can even charge your client a consulting fee for installing Linux and be legally out of YaST license bounds. SuSE consists on 99.9% of GPL software derived from the public domain. Even RPM, on which YaST relies to operate, was created by Red Hat and GPLed. Practically SuSE=YaST. Alex