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.

Comments

Re:We'll see how it holds up vs. GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt we will.

SUSE would most likely have to sue. You don't need to sue for the right to use the software. If you have the right to and the ability to, you just use it. Adding extra unenforcible terms would be equivalent to me saying "you may not respond to this post". Would that stop you? If I genuinely thought I had the right to demand such a condition I could sue you if you did but it would be laughed out of court

Re:the openSUSE community

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. It's not like we have a shortage of distros.

I used to be a big SUSE fan; I started using it back in 1999 IIRC. I even got a free box copy of 10.0 sent to me because I helped in some bug-fixing. But then the MS patent deal happened, and my next OS upgrade was not to another version of SUSE, but to Kubuntu instead. I've been using Kubuntu ever since (just upgraded to 8.04 this weekend), and am very happy with it. The package management is so far ahead of the RPM mess that SUSE still uses, I'm annoyed I didn't switch sooner. My biggest complaint with Kubuntu is that you can't set up RAID with the graphical installer; you have to fall back to the text version, and that one doesn't let you set up RAID 10 volumes. But everything else is so much easier and more convenient, it's worth it.

Yes, quite

[Anonymous Coward]

If you release the results of a benchmark, you are in breach of the terms of the EULA, as such your license to the use the software is revoked, and you must uninstall the software (or at least strip out all the non OSS parts, and Novel Trademarks, at which point you might as well just install a different distro): No you don't. Read the section of the EULA again where Novell specifies what it may do if you violate that part of the EULA:

If You are a vendor of products that are functionally similar to
or compete with the Software ("Similar Products"), or are acting on behalf
of such a vendor, and You publish or disclose benchmark information on the
Software in violation of this restriction, then notwithstanding anything to
the contrary in the Similar Product's end user license agreement, and in
addition to any other remedies Novell may have, Novell shall have the right
to perform benchmark testing on Similar Products and to disclose and publish that benchmark information and You hereby represent that You have authority to grant such right to Novell. You're not required to uninstall anything. Novell simply states that if you do a benchmark on their products that they can do one on yours. That's it. Don't be confused by the legal text where they reserve all of their additional rights - "and in addition to any other remedies Novell may have" - that's not some kind of trap. That language just protects their rights and lets you know that they aren't waiving any of their rights by spelling out the remedy they're about to give. The problem you're seeing doesn't exist.

Have you installed Firefox lately?

[Ed Avis]

If you took part in Firefox Download Day, did you notice the unpleasant EULA that the Firefox installer pops up? Pretty much the same as any proprietary application. Looks like another case of taking free software and slapping a restrictive EULA on it for no reason other than the legal department think it's a good idea. I don't think what OpenSUSE does is right, and I'm glad I use Fedora, but it is certainly becoming more common.