[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: Novell SuSe DVD's... -- SLSS/SLES very much "value add"

[Will Senn]

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Bryan J. Smith wrote about the LTRK and correctly pointed out that it 
contained a variety of evaluation versions.
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Bryan,

Your comments cover a lot of territory, from SLES to Suse Linux 
Professional 9.1. However, I must point out that Suse Linux Professional 
9.1 is freely downloadable sans a tiny, tiny minority of proprietary 
non-freely distributable apps (name one without looking it up and you 
get a gold star). Symantically speaking it can be argued that this makes 
it other than 'Suse Linux Professional 9.1' (I'm not going there).  I 
must point out that your interpretation of evaluation as "not legal for 
production use" doesn't appear in any license I could find. The Suse 
Linux Professional 9.1 DVD says that the software is Licensed for 
Evaluation Only and Transfer Prohibited. It also says to look at the DVD 
1a readme.txt for more information. The readme does not mention a single 
word about not using the software with production systems.  The only 
license information that is included that relates to Suse Linux 
Professional 9.1 as a unit is the GPL and another file called COPYING 
that explains that not all of the software in the DVD is bound by the 
terms of the GPL and that you must abide by each software's own license.

Perhaps, you feel that this is what 'evaluation' means rather than being 
a definition provided by SUSE? I would agree that deploying a bunch of 
'evaluation' workstations withouth paying SUSE for them and using a LTRK 
DVD, would be unethical. However, I don't think that the licensing 
precludes the use of the software in production (single instance).

Still, if you know of a license agreement that explains the limits of 
the evaluation, I'd be interested in reading it.

Thanks,

Will