Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3767 mails)

[Phil Burness <pburness@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 23 February 2006 14:03, Per Jessen wrote:
> Phil Burness wrote:
> > Technically I guess you could load it on as many as you like.....
> > Morally.... your call
>
> IMHO, technically, morally, ethically, practically, legally. Whichever
> way you turn it, you can use SUSE Linux as much as you want.
>
> > Remember at the end of the day your company is in business to make
> > profit, so is SuSE and Novell.
>
> But as Novell is just distributing others peoples free software, what
> you pay for in the boxed version is Novells value-add & service.  If
> you have no need for either, why buy the boxed version?  In particular
> if you're running a business.
>
>
> /Per Jessen, Zürich

Like I said - your call, but I think some of the value add is intangible - 
like providing the servers that host this list that we all use, bandwidth, 
providing updated packages, collecting all the nice bits of free software 
together so lazy people like me can take advantage of it...

I recognise the fact that it's free to install on as many machines as you 
want, and that Novell are happy with that, but I'm not comfortable in using 
other peoples free efforts to make more money. I'd set an internal policy 
like "for every 10 machines we'll buy the official box", or if I was making 
loads of money then "for every 3rd machine we'll buy the official box". 

I'd also like to see Novell donate a percentage of the profit donated into 
charity or open source projects etc.

Just me and probably why I'm happy but poor :-)

-- 
Phil Burness
Linux User since 1991 - currently using SuSE 9.3
Warrington - United Kingdom