If this is about human disagreements, to which is the best team, then it is a sorry thing.

Open is about working together, even if it means that you end up working with others you may not agree with.

Novell is building bridges between the two software cultures, and whenever you do this you get traffic both ways, some of it unwanted.

But this has to be done.

Novell showed Microsoft the way with directory services, maybe they have more to learn from Novell.

My favored distribution is whichever is the latest release of (fedora,Ubuntu or OpenSUSE).

I am downloading Opensuse 11 now , I just want to see what good work has gone into this distribution.

I will be thankful to all the people who put it together.

And I will marvel at how well these open working techniques are evolving, regardless of what team people play on.

Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a possible incarnation of a known (eet), pseudonymous, forever-nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.

As someone already pointed out this restrictive stuff in the BETA EULA was included because some german magazines distributed alpha or beta versions as FINALS and thereby spread misinformation (just like this site does btw.) about the quality of the final release (funny enough the only comment that contains a bit truth is marked as “trolling”).

Here is the EULA of the final 10.3 release (and the 11.0 one will be either identical or similar):

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/repo/oss/EULA.txt

Please feel free to point out where this FINAL EULA restricts your rights.

Last but not least you folks should read http://en.opensuse.org/FAQ:Novell-MS so you get at least a few facts right.

Further you should acknowledge the fact that Novell is one of the biggest contributor to various FOSS projects (Kernel, KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice, …) so if you want to avoid using stuff developed by Novell start to write your own operating system.

So please, if you hat Novell because “they have a deal with the devil” it is fine but just stop spreading FUD based on misinformation which makes you look like an utter moron and start to build your claims on facts.

regrds

(I say non-code-contributors because they may contribute via bug reporting)

To prove my point, how much of your code is being used inside of SuSE Linux? Odds are that the number is approximately 0 lines.

There have been very few developers who have protested the deal.

In the other hand, I was a Suse user, even bought Novell Suse 9.1. to show I was backing the effort Novell was putying in the opensource side. But I finished fed up with the yast thing and gave a try to other distros.

And then, Novell happened to start these deals with m$, which I don’t like at all. I find them ashaming, they are somehow betraying all the guys that ever wrote a piece of Linux.

Luckily there are plenty of other distros to choose. That’s one of the great things with the open source.

All that said IMHO, of course.

If you notice the preamble “Novell Pre-Release Software License Agreement” you see that what we’re talking about is the license of the pre-release, not the real deal (yet anyway).

Let’s face it, Apple had an EULA that only allowed the windows version of Safari to be installed on an Apple (OSX) PC…

The EULA is no doubt legal – it can’t override laws anyway and it has exceptions for ‘other’ licenses.

e.g.
“The Software is a modular operating system. Most of the components
are open source packages, developed independently, and accompanied by separate license terms. Your license rights with respect to
individual components accompanied by separate license terms are
defined by those terms; nothing in this Agreement (including, for
example, the “Other License Terms and Restrictions,” below) shall
restrict, limit, or otherwise affect any rights or obligations You may
have, or conditions to which You may be subject, under such license
terms.”

Of course – none of those terms are listed in the eula itself.

It just looks scarier than it actually is. Novell is a proprietary software company – the corporate culture is proprietary, buying ximian and suse didn’t change that. Their business plan all along was to ‘value add’ that free nonsense with quality proprietary layers. And there’s really nothing wrong with that model – otherwise how are you going to generate significant revenue, when people could otherwise just copy the software? Remember, the thinking is still along the lines of proprietary boxed content with ongoing licence fees – not as a services company.

(as an aside, I actually found Novell a bit creepy to work for sometimes – you mentioned MS and cults in an earlier article, Novell is very cultish. They’re quite proud of their connections to Mormons and their openness to minority religion. From what I gathered talking to Novel veterans, when they were big and everyone went to brainshare every year it sounded like a big family summer christian camp … a bit too weird.)

If they’re going to add an EULA – why don’t they list the clauses from the GPL that tell you specifically that you CAN modify/copy/distribute the code, AND that you may receive the complete source code by written offer?

Wouldn’t that be nice.

But then again, they cannot list every license for every package on the disc.

You have SO absolutely no idea how this thing came together. The EULA is an open topic of discussion for the openSUSE community BTW.

Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a possible incarnation of a known (eet), pseudonymous, forever-nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.

Do bear in mind that few people ‘land’ in the front page. They arrive the site because of a specific article they wish to read.

You have to remember that only a small percentage of people coming to your website are going to find this subject fascinating enough to dig through the large amount of material you provide. You have to provide these first-time and often last-time readers with easy to find, quick to read, and persuasive arguments that address their issues.

I believe that there are two distinct groups of people new to the issue you need to address:

a) institutional decision makers who decide whether or not to buy Novell products
b) consumers who decide whether to use OpenSuse or not

You need links to address these two groups on the top of your page. In fact, they should be the only links besides Editors, About this Site, and Using this Site, because this two links need to be easy to find for the first-timer. Or you can even think about further redesign, because you do address so many issues beyond Novell. I’d be glad to help there.

If anyone really REALLY RRRREALLLY likes OpenSUSE, they should fork it and host it for a community of like-minded individuals. Of course, most of what is in OpenSUSE is available in other distros. The OpenSUSE people simply rework the final product but anyone else can start a forum to get this done. Again, if enough people REALLY want to do this, it can be done and should be done. I wouldn’t touch anything that smelled like OpenSUSE except after a long time of me being confident that the copyrights to such a fork were not helping out Novell or Monopolysoft. I also would strip out dotregret mono material and instead use and contribute to the great alternatives to whatever is provided through this fake mono standard.

Spinning your own distro will become trendy.

And check out this letter: http://deepakphatak.blogspot.com/2008/05/this-is.html

[Quote from Roy Schestowitz: but the following comment addressed to LinuxJedi] >> KDE4 is KDE4 is KDE4. Maybe they put a nice theme on.

Which comes back to the remastering thing. I think adding your own special touch to your #2 live distro, burning it, and giving it out happily without worries beats by a mile most things you are ever likely to be able to do with your #1 distro if that #1 is OpenSUSE. Fork OpenSUSE, or much better, help make your #2 into your #1 because even a fork will add some value to OpenSUSE/Novell into the forseeable future since it would take a while to replace much of the plumbing.

I would even volunteer to do it myself, but I’m still learning the issues.

But all this Novell / MS stuff is really putting a dampener on it.

http://lwn.net/Articles/283566/

Novell reserves all rights not expressly granted to You. You may not:
(1) reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software except
and only to the extent it is expressly permitted by applicable law or
the license terms accompanying a component of the Software; or (2)
transfer the Software or Your license rights under this Agreement, in
whole or in part.

No title to or ownership of the Software is transferred to You. Novell
and/or its licensors owns and retains all title and ownership of all
intellectual property rights in the Software, including any
adaptations or copies. You acquire only a license to use the Software.

You
may not, without Novell’s prior written consent not to be unreasonably
withheld, publish or disclose to any third party the results of any
benchmark test of the Software.

No redistribution? Reverse engineering? What the heck? I’ll call this thing ClosedSUSE from now on.

Novell thinks that people are stupid

They are getting people hooked to so called paid Linux.