In order to install ‘openSUSE’ (product), you must agree to terms of the following license agreement:
openSUSE 11.1
Novell Pre-Release Software License Agreement
PLEASE READ THIS AGREEMENT CAREFULLY. BY INSTALLING OR OTHERWISE USING THE SOFTWARE (INCLUDING ITS COMPONENTS), YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS, DO NOT DOWNLOAD, INSTALL OR USE THE SOFTWARE AND, IF APPLICABLE, RETURN THE ENTIRE UNUSED PACKAGE TO THE RESELLER WITH YOUR RECEIPT FOR A REFUND. THE SOFTWARE MAY NOT BE SOLD, TRANSFERRED, OR FURTHER DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN AUTHORIZATION FROM NOVELL.
Mr. Wafaa clears up the situation:
“Yawn! This EULA is used with *every* non-final release. The main purpose is to protect openSUSE and Novell from magazines and other distributors from bundling a non-GM release as the final product. Hence the “interesting pointâ€
As the release number has changed, it effectively becomes a new release hence requiring confirmation of the EULA. Would you rather no EULA, and have it distributed by someone as the real deal and wonder why people moan that openSUSE is an unstable worthless distro?”
Since when did distributing your software, generating buzz etc become bad? At what point did the team go ‘Well people could distribute this outside of Novell, and that would be horrible marketing. If we throw a EULA in there people will love that and help!’.
I mean honestly, the openSUSE team from what I have observed needs a community, and developers to help. How does this make anyone want to help? How does it foster the environment needed?
Related posts:
#1 by Ian Stoffberg on October 31, 2008 - 3:28 am
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I don’t mind the EULA. My guess is that its related to the culture of suing everything that moves which is invading the world. Conservatives companies probably overuse these EULA’s, but thats their prerogative.
Regarding the effect on the community, I think Novell have done worse things than ship EULA’s.
Disclaimer: I *use* OpenSUSE 11 on my work laptop and Intrepid on my home desktop.
#2 by Marius Gedminas on October 31, 2008 - 3:40 am
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Misleading distribution of pre-release versions branded as final versions has been a problem for a long time (e.g. the accidental nonfunctional “Debian 1.0″ release by InfoMagic). On the other hand this EULA is too harsh. Couldn’t they limit branding instead of distribution, i.e. say that if you distribute this, you must explicitly call it a pre-release of OpenSUSE.
#3 by meaksd on October 31, 2008 - 11:42 am
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They mean branding. When you remove the branding you can distribute it. It’s mostly GPL.
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