On 23/02/06, Per Jessen wrote:

maxpaz wrote:

...

I'm a sysadmin inside a private organisation and I'm just wondering if it is possible with only one suse 10 retail (amazing distro i can setup all the printers, scanner, modem .... with one click ) box , to install and deploy on several pc (me/98/xp to suse migrations) inside the company without legal trouble.

Yes. The boxed version is just a nicely packaged copy of what is available for download.

I think the difference is that you only have support for one installation. Though you can purchase a support package for multiple set ups. -- ============================================== I am only human, please forgive me if I make a mistake it is not deliberate. ============================================== Xmas may be over but, PLEASE DON'T drink and drive you'll make it to the next one that way. Kevan Farmer Linux user #373362 Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR

On Thursday 23 February 2006 11:59, Johannes Meixner wrote:

Hello,

On Feb 23 12:05 Per Jessen wrote (shortened):

...

maxpaz wrote:

...

I'm a sysadmin inside a private organisation and I'm just wondering if it is possible with only one suse 10 retail (amazing distro i can setup all the printers, scanner, modem .... with one click ) box , to install and deploy on several pc (me/98/xp to suse migrations) inside the company without legal trouble.

I am no lawyer but as far as I know it is allowed, but see below.

...

The boxed version is just a nicely packaged copy of what is available for download.

As far as I know this is not true. The boxed version may contain proprietary software which is not available for free download or which has a license with whatever special restrictions.

The boxed version does contain full or partialy proprietary software. For example the Adobe Reader (package acroread) or the Epson Avasys Image Scan scanner driver software (package iscan). The license of this two software packages allow to be installed as many times as you like. But I cannot guarantee that the licenses of any software which is included in the boxed version allows this because I don't know all those licenses and I am no lawyer.

To display the license tags for all installed RPMs, you can use for example:

for p in $( rpm -qa ) do echo -n "$p: " rpm -qi $p | grep -o 'License:.*$' done

In particular check the RPMs with "Commercial" or "Other License" or "see package" in the license tag.

Isn't there a nice dialog at the beginning of the installation regarding free versus proprietary licenses so that you can reject any non-free software to be installed?

Kind Regards, Johannes Meixner -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5 Mail: jsmeix@suse.de 90409 Nuernberg, Germany WWW: http://www.suse.de/

Technically I guess you could load it on as many as you like..... Morally.... your call Remember at the end of the day your company is in business to make profit, so is SuSE and Novell. -- Phil Burness Linux User since 1991 - currently using SuSE 9.3 Warrington - United Kingdom

On Thursday 23 February 2006 14:03, Per Jessen wrote:

Phil Burness wrote:

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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

At 02:02 AM 24/02/2006, Per Jessen wrote:

Phil Burness wrote:

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I recognise the fact that it's free to install on as many machines as you want, and that Novell are happy with that,

They don't really have much choice. It's all down to the licensing of what goes into SUSE Linux.

...

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 look after (amongst my linux community) a multi-site company with all except for two sites having between one and three workstations. They have been setup as a ISDN multi-star-ring network of five major hubs. The policy (after some serious discussion when I first set them up) is that they have one pack per server, one pack per five workstations for the two main sites and one pack per site for the smaller sites. They loved the idea as some of the sites are only "personed" for a few hours, once a week and the M$ costs at time of conversion was close to causing them to go bankrupt. sorry for the waffle scsijon

On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 14:57 +0000, Phil Burness wrote:

On Thursday 23 February 2006 14:03, Per Jessen wrote:

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.

They already do. I don't know how many people are on the payroll but there are many that only write code for different linux projects, one of them being the kernel. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998

Mike McMullin wrote:

On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 07:41 -0500, James Knott wrote:

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Unless I'm seriously mistaken, you can install on as many computers as you want.

As long as you can get your hands on them and finish the install before those other folks find out. ;)

Maybe we should go into stores and install SUSE on all the computers. ;-)

On 23/02/06, Ken Schneider wrote:

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Maybe we should go into stores and install SUSE on all the computers. ;-)

Well at least slip a live CD/DVD into the drive and wait and see how long it tales them to figure out the cause of the computer running better.

Now that's a good reason to order loads of Ubuntu CD's. I have an account with Shipit - the company who sends them out - and I always have a load left over. Hmmm, PC World here I come ;-) -- ============================================== I am only human, please forgive me if I make a mistake it is not deliberate. ============================================== Xmas may be over but, PLEASE DON'T drink and drive you'll make it to the next one that way. Kevan Farmer Linux user #373362 Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR