On Friday 23 May 2003 07:31 am, David Krider wrote:
On Fri, 2003-05-23 at 00:29, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
Unless it's changed and I didn't notice it. You can copy SuSE as many times as you like and give it to all your friends. As long as the copies are free. You can't charge them for the copies..well I suppose you could charge them $2.50 for the cost of the CD's or have them buy blank CD's for you. But they won't get any support what so ever from SuSE for these copies. Only a valid serial numbered copy will get support...and they do keep records of these things.
My take is that you can sell it for as much as you like, but you can't *sell* it and still call it "SuSE Linux." The software is yours; the only restriction under the GPL is that you release the source with the binaries. However, the trademarks and service marks of SuSE GmBH (I think that's how it goes) are SuSE's, and you're not allowed to use them to endorse whatever you're selling.
First you are assuming everything on the SuSE cd is GPL. It isn't, so you can't distribute the whole CD in that way, you could distribute all the GPL software on the CD that way but not the non-GPL software.
So you can give it away all over the place, or call it "ESuS Linux" and sell it. I doubt anyone's going to come knocking if you only charge to cover your costs of duplication though...
You couldn't call it ESuS and sell it. That would be a trademark issue in most places. You are obviously trying to bank on the trademark of another company. Now if you didn't use the same capitalization and called it Esus you could probably get away with it. It is best to know what your redistribution rights are for the materials on the CD. The main issue seems to be YaST itself. Not GPL'ed and with a somewhat restrictive license. I don't remember what it is, and currently I am not running SuSE so I can't check.