Technomage,
For what it's worth, this release of SuSE has been a bit unusual;
normally, SuSE doesn't put any part of the ftp install on their
mirrors, until they put the whole thing up. With 9.3, they have put
everything up, but the kernel packages, apparently. If you do a
md5sum comparison, you'll find that MD5SUMS is missing from the i586
directory. It *seems* as though Novell is allowing people to download
the vast majority of the distribution now, and will release the kernel
packages whenever they see fit.
I haven't seen anywhere that they're advertising SuSE 9.3 Pro is out
and available for download. If anything, the live cd/dvd might be
available.
I hope this helps to clarify...
-Erik
On 6/12/05, Derek Neighbors <
derek@gnue.org> wrote:
>
> > The bottom line is to make sure you have all the details and the
> > facts, from the entire document before you go on a fight with
> > Novell. Also, if you want to enlist help in a fight, you should do
> > all the leg work in a well documented fashion so potential enlistees
> > have all the details they need to believe your cause.
> >
> > In this case, I don't think you have cause, unless the agreement you
> > cite is not this same one I am looking at.
> >
> > Interesting excersize, anyway.
>
> First let me say that it is good to see this kind of discussion. It
> means people truly care about software freedom and not just obtaining
> software for free!
>
> Based on the dialog, I agree with Technomage that it just seems wrong
> what SuSE (Novell) is doing here. I also agree with Alan, that based on
> the licensing agreements they are stating that the software they own
> copyright on is treated in a certain (non-free) way. Being the
> copyright holder they are allowed to license their work however they see
> fit.
>
> I think it is important to take the time to legally explain why they can
> do this. The legal question is SuSE vX.X a "single" program or
> "several" programs put on the same distribution chain? Is it
> "aggregration" or "combination"? Combining two programs of conflicting
> license is not legal. However aggregating two programs into a single
> distribution chain generally is. For example many people's beloved
> KDE's underlying toolkit (Qt) was not compatible with the GPL for some
> time. Yet it could still be distributed with other GPL programs like
> the Linux kernel. As such, SuSE can bundle("aggregate") their
> proprietary software along with a myriad of other licensed works and
> release it as SuSE vX.X.
>
> A good exercise would be to actually validate that the software they are
> copyrighting and distributing as their own doesn't contain code from a
> Free Software base and that it doesn't "combine" with any other Free
> Software. Of course, much like viability (for those that like to debate
> abortion) what constitutes "combining" is up for debate. For those that
> have been around a while I think "combining" is the replacement word for
> "linking". ; )
>
> I am not a lawyer. So apply salt as you see fit. You can see the FSF's
> position on this here [0].
>
>
> -Derek Neighbors
>
> [0] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
>
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