suse doesn't forbid you patching your system; you just don't get SuSE supplied patches. If there is a security issue with sendmail, for instance, you have to get it from sendmail. You have to find the patches individually. With the distribution vendors, you have a single access point for patches. For a large installation, it's worth the money, in my humble opinion. Also, you can assume some testing went into it, so if it breaks you can have someone to gripe at.
-----Original Message----- From: Mike Ross [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 9:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: SLES 8 On Wed, 26 Mar 2003 22:54:16 +0200, Tzafrir Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: snip.. > * A major one: the distro is not worth much without the patches. What > you download from that server is nice for testing, but it is still not > enough for production, because it lacks, say, the latest sendmail > patch. So if you try to install this server in a production > environment, it will either break, or will be broken-into. > > And remember that the license of SuSE basically forbids everybody else > to compit with SuSE in providing patches. So you basically have to > have a support contract with SuSE. How exactly does that work? What license terms do Suse impose on, for instance, sendmail, in your example? I suspect the authors of sendmail might be surprised to discover that Suse forbid them to provide patches... The only 'license of SuSE' that's involved (AFAIK) is the Yast license... Mike -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
