The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops

Posted Jun 3, 2008 22:52 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops by msmeissn
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to distributions for laptops

Surely the magazines are quite within their rights to distribute copies of any version of
OpenSuSE, including alpha releases?  It is meant to be free software, no?

All the OpenSuSE guys need do is make sure their installer displays a message that this is an
alpha release.  If they want to send their lawyers on the attack, registering and enforcing a
trademark for OpenSuSE would be a far less boneheaded way to do it.

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opensuse eula

Posted Jun 4, 2008 16:15 UTC (Wed) by nettings (subscriber, #429) [Link]

true, but then mindshare and release craze is the only palpable currency in a world where
distributions are free for the taking. i can understand the suse crowd is less than enthused
about people ripping them off by pushing pre-release stuff to the masses to improve their
sales, and taking momentum out of the legitimate release at the same time.

it should be noted that the final release eula is a lot more in keeping with established
standards of the open source community.

i agree there should be a less obnoxious way of discouraging freeloaders - maybe the suse
community should review their pre-release eula. but compared to a windows pre-release one,
it's still amazingly friendly :-D