Hi again, Am Samstag, 22. November 2003 23:10 schrieb Alex Daniloff:
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.
So if I sell copies of the SUSE CD and charge only for the CDs themself, say $10 and claim that it's not for the software but just for my work and for the material, then you think that would be covered by the YaST license? It's not.
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: do you have anything like that on offer? Could you point me to it (URL or pricelist or the like)? hartmut