[NBLUG/talk] Novell to own SuSE

[Kyle Rankin]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 10:32:47AM -0800, Dustin Mollo wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 10:21:29AM -0800, E Frank Ball wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 01:08:14PM -0500, Bob Blick wrote:
> > } After yesterday's RedHat/Fedora announcement, this one really makes me
> > } wish it were April 1st, but it appears to be true:
> > } http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_releases/archive03/novell_suse.html
> > } Debian, here I come!
> > 
> > RedHat Enterprise License terms
> > http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html
> > 
> > It isn't pretty.  A couple quotes:
> 
> even more disturbing, imho (comments to follow...):
> 
[snip disturbing legalese]
>
> what this basically means to me (WARNING: i'm not a lawyer), is that you
> *can't* install the product (RHEL AS/ES/WS 3) on multiple machines.  someone
> posted on slashdot that you *can* install it on multiple machines if you
> decline the support agreement...which means you can not download *any*
> errata updates, with the exception of the SRPMS made available publically on
> their ftp site.
> 
> -dustin

It sounds to me like RedHat will find out fairly quickly what Microsoft has
found out from time to time -- that geeks do read these licensing agreements
sometimes, and that you can only go so far with intruding on a person's
place of business, before they start shopping elsewhere.

At least with Linux, switching vendors isn't nearly as painful as with a
Windows or Apple migration.

I'm just wondering how Novell/SUSE will modify their licensing (if at all)
in response.

-- 
Kyle Rankin
NBLUG President
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org
IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
kyle at nblug.org