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OpenSUSE's EULAs vs. Free Software Ideals
Anonymous Coward Maximus writes with some interesting (and disheartening) bits found in recent EULAs from SUSE: "Apparently the Beta came/comes with an interesting EULA discussed in this Planète Béranger article that just makes me think where is this whole Novell/Microsoft ridiculousness going to end? One quote from the EULA to whet your appetite: 'The Software may contain an automatic disabling mechanism that prevents its use after a certain period of time, so You should back up Your system and take other measures to prevent any loss of files or data.' Hmmm... Here is the full Beta 3 EULA for you to dissect. Note that the final release has a different EULA that doesn't look that scary, but still mentions things like 'You acquire only a license to use the Software' and such." Personally, I find the "Benchmark Testing" section (under GENERAL TERMS in the final release's EULA) to be pretty irksome.
Novell doesn't really seem interested in the openSUSE community beyond using them as free testers anyway. Build Service notwithstanding, openSUSE is built by Novell and not by its community. Bugs on the bugzilla can link via dependency to closed internal bugs and then it's just "sorry, that's internal, we'll fix it now sit quietly please".
I think there's some people with hearts in the right place even inside Novell (I'm not just talking about the Czech and German teams) but as an aggregate they don't show much sign on "getting it" where the community model is concerned.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Is this not like re-licensing the code they ship? I guess most of the software they package is GPL, so is applying an EULA on GPLed code even allowed? Novell should be free to put EULAs on the code *they* write (of course), but OpenSUSE is a distro, and I guess most of the code is not their own.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
You know, the world's not exactly beating a path to Linux distros. It might not be the best idea to piss off a huge percentage of your intended audience, especially given that it's much more freedom-loving than most.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That's sad, as I used to like SUSE back around 2000. I guess we can expect the same thing to happen to Google someday...the older a company gets, the more it gets taken over by lawyers and abandons any early ideals.
Have you read my blog lately?
I don't like it but that's what I like about F/LOSS projects: there's variety. I can always use another distro that can offer a (similar|completely different) experience.
On the other hand, if I was using Windows...
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
... we have been warned.I know I will never recommend S.u.S.E. again.
You are being totally unfair. The article is on a deliberate rampage against Novell and uses out-of-context examples in a deliberate attempt to deliver FUD about SuSE.
Let us please return to a FACT BASED discussion here.
The time-bombing mechanism clause is in the EULA in order to warn users that the commercial distro can be used on a trial-basis, which will disable itself after some time. That is no different than the way a billion other shareware software products have been distributed for the last 3 decades. Ok, so Novell were stupid enough to actually write that in their license. Red Hat has an identical term in their Red Hat Enterprise for Mainframe / System Z distro. See for yourself. It has a 180 day limitation.
Is Red Hat now evil as well? Or could we PLEASE agree on the fact that this is a totally typical and normal way of letting users try c a commercial software distribution for a limited period of time?
I am not a Novell stockholder, so frankly I couldn't care less about their company value or the market share they own. But i WOULD like to see actual FACTS finding a place in this debate. Not small snippets of text taken out of context and abused for spreading a message which is very different from reality.
Taking small paragraphs and using them totally out of context is about the oldest FUD strategy in existence. And it is normally something we only see large corporations and monopolistic companies practice. It is very sad indeed to see that a community normally in opposition of FUD is turning to such methods.
Novell may be evil. Fine. But if you want to call them bad names, could we at least get some actual facts, which live up to the same standards you would normally require in other issues - for example similar to the decent standard we see in the more scientific articles?
Fact and actual information is king. FUD is FUD, no matter who wrote it and for what purpose.
Personally I am beginning to get the impression that all discussions on Novell/SuSE end up similar to this little scene. What more can I say? Buuuuuuuuurnnn! The logic in the discussion seems to be on the same level anyway...
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...