Anyone get the business model Novell is using with SuSE? They keep sending me trial CDs for SuSE (I'm on Novell's mailing list), but who wants to spend the time installing an operating system on a server only to have it expire in 60 or 90 days? If it's open source, shouldn't I be able to run it indefinitely (without support, of course)?
This sort of limited trial is common for software marketed to big businesses -- the sort of place with enough people around that they will do a trial installation and a formal evaluation before buying anything or putting real users on it. It may not be the right model for Linux, where a lot of the users are smaller shops that throw things into at least limited production use right away, because they don't have the luxury of spare time or spare machines to spend on formal evaluations.
As somebody pointed out, the SuSE trial software doesn't actually enforce the time limit. But you lose access to the downloadable updates after it runs out (they use a subscription model for the update server, and you get a short subscription with the trial software), which limits its usefulness for a production server, especially with the rapid rate of security updates nowadays.
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