What about Nat Friedman?

Posted Dec 22, 2006 14:43 UTC (Fri) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963) [Link]

Yeah, SuSE are among the losers and the SuSE folks didn't ask for this. And there's not a thing that I see we can do about it

Sorry, that's just not true.

SuSE was a proprietary operating system. Not only did it include proprietary software, but it required proprietary software to function (I'm talking about YaST here). Whatever the old SuSE did, people had to accept their decision, as the nature of proprietary software dictates.

SUSE is not a proprietary operating system, and that's thanks to Novell. They bought it and released it under a free software license. The entire distribution, including YaST, is now free: if you don't like it you can simply fork it and move on. There is something you can do about it, even if it's just rebranding the openSUSE distribution for the heck of it.

Posted Dec 22, 2006 14:53 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Perhaps you or someone else can answer this question for me.

I've nothing against SuSE other than the herein stated, but honest
question, what's the big deal with hurting them, since the licensing on
much of their own software was unfree anyway, before Novell bought them.
Someone mentions not seeing a reason to leave SuSE after 10 years... well,
SuSE was never all that great a free software supporter anyway, Novell in
fact made them far freer than they had been, by GPLing YaST and the like.
It's not hard to see how anyone comfortable with the pre-Novell SuSE would
have no problem with staying with it now, either, since they obviously
didn't have a problem with unfree at that point so why should they now.
(Source was available for things like YaST, but it wasn't free code due to
restrictions, sort of like source available but patent encumbered code,
eh?)

In fact, it would seem until this anyway, Novell has been pretty good to
the free software community since they got involved with Linux, anyway.
They've provided a pay check for many FLOSS developers. They've bought
out and freed a fair amount of code and companies, GPLing things like YaST
that was formerly source available but unfree due to a restricted license.
And they've done a lot to destroy the SCO attacks. Until now, their
recent record had been pretty good in fact.

That isn't to excuse this action, as the language had to be deliberately
engineered to subvert the clear intent of the GPLv2, so there's no getting
around a direct intent to do so, and that simply can't be excused.
However, one is left wondering exactly where Novell is headed. Do they
intend to become the next SCO, using the same "assets" they say they never
handed over to SCO? Were they simply blinded by the $$ and didn't realize
the implications? Are they entering a period where much like Sun, they
seem to have multiple personality disorder in their behavior toward the
FLOSS community (just as Sun is hinting they are finally serious about
FLOSS, what with the GPLing of Java and favorable hints toward the GPLv3,
and might actually mean it this time)?

Duncan