Berni Elbourn wrote:
Guenter Lichtenberg wrote:
On Tuesday 11 October 2005 15:40, Marcel Mourguiart wrote:
Hi - since this is all very technical I would recommend to just ask Novell/SuSE directly if you are allowed to re-distribute SuSE (as opposed to individual S/W packages) for your specific case. That would clarify the situation immediately and stop all rumours and attempts to translate the license by non experts on legalities (note I am also not an expert and I am also not affiliated with SuSE or Novell).
gl
Hi Marcel,
Good point. Some of us have done this in the past but it is piecemeal and only applies to individual projects. I will considering this approach again but have started to way this repeated effort against choosing another distribution for my services.
Now that Suse is supposed to be open I beg your indulgence to have this clarified in the open as it were.
Berni
--
Novell doesn't want people to sell OpenSUSE (the collective work). There are several ways to comply with the licensing and not violate anything. Novell retains copyright and also trademarks by the way, on things like their graphics. This is what the copyright notices cover, not anyone else's copyrights, which they don't infringe by claiming copyright on the entire OS. RedHat did this and won't allow resale of their free versions. Same with Novell & OpenSUSE. You MAY *give* away the software freely as well, as long as you do not receive any consideration. Sell your services separately, give OpenSUSE away freely. This is indeed a valid method of complying with the license. Also, if the same licensing clause applies in the paid version of SUSE, the same methodology applies. In that case, SELL the software separately from the services. Unbundling the two manages to satisfy all conditions quite nicely. It's good to note that Berni has been a customer of SUSE for years. Good too see people supporting Open Source companies. RP