[conspire] SuSE Personal/Prof, apt4rpm, Newbie Ed. -was- Distros for novices

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Thu Sep 9 08:37:22 PDT 2004


[Distribution snipped back to just "conspire".  Mark, I don't do
crossposts -- and also currently decline to post _many_ sorts of
back-and-forth conversations to svlug at lists.svlug.org for reasons
indicated at http://linuxmafia.com/bale/#svlug .]

Quoting Mark S Bilk (mark at cosmicpenguin.com):

> SuSE 9.1 Personal does not include any development tools, not even 
> gcc or make.

Mark, EBLUG meets at Hurricane Electric's Internet colocation facility
in Fremont; therefore, we have incredible amounts of bandwidth available
to set YaST / SUSE Update loose to pull down additional packages as
desired.  We'd be using the CDs for the base install, with the specific
intent of making good use of that venue.

> But the Professional version of course has everything, and it's legal
> to make copies of it and give them away.

This could not possibly be true unless SUSE[1] / Novell have dropped a
number of non-redistributable packages from the SUSE Linux Professional
boxed set, since I checked the full package listings in SUSE Linux 8.2.

As of that version, the boxed set of SUSE Linux Professional included
(among other non-redistributable proprietary packages):

Adobe Acroread
Moneyplex
OpenPBS
Opera Web browser
Real Networks RealPlayer8

Also as of 8.2, the boxed set of SUSE Linux Personal included all of those
except for OpenPBS, and therefore _also_ was not lawful to redistribute.

(Please note that I was speaking, in my earlier message, of the 1-CD
_downloadable image_ -- a opposed to the multi-CD boxed set -- from SUSE
Linux Personal 9.1.  The 1-CD variant omits all of the above.)

So, unfortunately, unless SUSE Linux has greatly changed in the last
couple of versions, your statement about SUSE Linux Professional being
lawful to redistribute is not correct.  (The SUSE Linux Personal boxed
set isn't, either.)

More information at:  "SUSE Product Strategy" on
http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Licensing_and_Law .  (I have to update that
page to add the 1-CD variant of SUSE Personal.)

(Before you object that Acrobat Reader, Opera Web Browser, and
RealPlayer8 can be downloaded from the Internet, I'll point out that you
may do that from _authorised_ download locations only:  The licenses for
those packages don't include the right of redistribution, which is
always reserved to the copyright owner by default operation of copyright
law absent a licence grant to the contrary.  The other two packages
aren't downloadable at all.  

Checking http://www.matrica.de/prodmpxwinlnx.htm, one sees that
Moneyplex _is_ still in SUSE Linux 9.1 boxed-set editions, so I believe
that proves my point.)

> Also, there are apt4rpm scripts for SuSE which automatically deal 
> with dependencies, and a site with the appropriate files which are 
> kept closely up to date with the SuSE ftp site and other sources, 
> and thus with bug/security fixes.

Yes, I know about all that, but thanks.

[1] Yes, the name really _should_ be written "SuSE" -- and it used to
be.  After all, it stands for System und Softwareentwicklung, and
one doesn't capitalise conjunctions.  In olden days, it was in fact
written S.u.S.E., warming the hearts of us punctuation freaks.  But the
company first dropped the periods, and then (shortly before the Novell
acquisition) officially decided that "und" should be capitalised.  So,
it's now "SUSE".  {sigh}






More information about the conspire mailing list