Hello again, On Wed, 31 Jul 2013, Ludwig Nussel wrote:
So while an open source license would of course be preferred, I don't see why a company shouldn't be allowed to distribute their software via our repos.
Actually there is a very good reason to not allow companies to distribute commercial software via our servers. At least not with a specific contract stating the rights and obligations of both sides. And that reason is liability. That goes both sides (these examples are constructed, and I'm not claiming at all that Dmitrys company or us would do anything like that, but it does point out the problems as soon as money is involved): a) What happens if our servers for some reason have problems delivering the software to customers. The company might be sueing us for compensation for lost revenue. b) The software might be found to infringe on some 3rd party rights by some court, and the holders of those might seek damage compensation. As we helped to distribute it, they might hold SUSE partly accountable and seek compensation also from us. I'm pretty sure nothing of the above could currently really be prevented with the contracts (non-existent) or disclaimers, except by knocking on wood and saying "it'll work just fine". Distributing free software has inherently similar problems of course. But case (a) above is immaterial because there can't be lost revenue. We still are in danger of (b) and try to mitigate this with certain rules, disclaimers and policies. But the _risk_ is still with us. We choose to take this risk for various reasons, among them because we want to further free software. But it's unclear why we should assume this distributors risk for commercial software when we don't see corresponding revenue. Ciao, Michael. P.S. as pointed out multiple times already, we do of course assume these risks for some closed software, as well justified exceptions. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org