openSUSE and the distribution of proprietary software

OpenSUSE (like SuSE Linux before it) has traditionally taken a position which is relatively friendly toward proprietary software. It was only in 2006 that Novell announced its intention to stop shipping non-GPL kernel modules, but it never made any such promises with regard to user space. So a typical openSUSE installation disk includes a number of proprietary goodies, including the Adobe Flash player, a number of fonts, ARCAD, the Acrobat PDF reader, the Opera web browser, RealPlayer, and more.

The presence of all this proprietary code is unwelcome to some users, of course, but it has another interesting effect: it requires that openSUSE be distributed with an end-user license agreement which has some very un-free-software-like terms. Among other things, it reads:

In other words, redistribution of the openSUSE DVD is not permitted. Members of the openSUSE mirror network are, technically, in violation of the EULA, though nobody appears to be in a hurry to call them on that. But the EULA raises eyebrows and makes some users uncomfortable; many people got into free software to avoid dealing with agreements like that.

The need for the EULA, rather than problems with proprietary software in general, is causing developers at Novell to reconsider which packages should go onto an openSUSE DVD. To that end, Novell product manager Michael Löffler has proposed a new scheme whereby the DVD would only contain redistributable software (including proprietary software, such as firmware, which allows redistribution). The openSUSE project would set up a network-based repository from which other proprietary applications could be installed; the installer would then install a couple of packages (the Adobe Flash player and Fluendo's MP3 codec) by default.

The end result for most users would be the same: an openSUSE installation with both free and proprietary software. At least, that would be the case for users with a decent network connection. But those users would also gain a DVD with a much less restrictive EULA allowing the DVD to be redistributed at will. (The current plan is to still have an agreement for trademark control and warranty disclaimer reasons, even though other software distributors have managed to eliminate EULAs for those purposes). At this point, it would also be easy to add an option to simply skip the configuration of the non-free repository for users who want a "clean" installation.

Most responses to this proposal have been positive. The happiness is not universal, though; one user complained:

It is true that one-stop shopping has long been a feature of the SUSE distribution. And a recent survey [PDF] suggests that a significant portion of the openSUSE user base makes use of at least a few of the proprietary tools included there. If the presence of this code is truly a "key point" of openSUSE, then taking it out could risk upsetting users at a time when, by some accounts, the visibility of this distribution is already dropping.

This risk would be mitigated by a couple of factors, though. One is that the need to download those packages over the net is not much of a stopping point for most users. After all, people installing Linux from a CD or DVD have usually resigned themselves to a massive download of package updates after the first boot anyway. Tossing a few more packages into that download - assuming they weren't set to be updated by then anyway - is not going to change the experience in any significant way.

But the other relevant point is that the need for much of this proprietary code is decreasing. Java used to be a big part of the openSUSE proprietary software load, but Java is now free. Your editor cannot remember when he last encountered a PDF file which could not be managed by at least one free viewer - though, evidently, such files do still exist. Perhaps the biggest remaining problem is Flash; progress is being made there, but Flash is most certainly not a solved problem. Beyond that, though, there are few situations indeed where a proprietary application is really needed for ordinary tasks.

The openSUSE distribution is not distancing itself from proprietary software at this time; it is just reorganizing its management of that software to address one of the problems it brings. But it is still hard to avoid the temptation to read between lines and look forward to a day when openSUSE, too, distributes only free software - not as a result of any sort of push for purity, but just because its users no longer have any need for anything else.