On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Tom Duerbusch wrote: > I will add one method. If you have a current maintenance support > contract, you can download the new release from the maintenance web > site. > > But since Suse contains Yast, which is not in the public domain, the > Suse code isn't in the public domain. But the trial and evaluation > copies, which are identical to the production copies, are free, from > Suse and they contain some "months" of installation support and > maintenance web access. These products are not to be used in production > (their wording). But once the trail/evaluation support keys expire, > you need to buy a support contract if you want to keep up with > maintenance and/or use it in production.
Please, take care with your language. "public domain" means that I can take it, change it, copyright it, not reveal my changes etc. Essentially, public domain software is unowned: its author has renounced his rights to it. In contrast, all Red Hat software, and most software in any Linux distribution is copyright and you may only use it within the terms of the relevant licence. I can take the configuration tools from Red Hat Linux and use them on my Debian system, and that's precisely what Klaus Knopper did in creating Knoppix: the reason it's so good at configuring itself is that it uses Red Hat software. Red Hat retains its rights over those tools, and tou may only use them under the terms of the licence Red Hat uses. Klaus cannot change that: indeed, he is required to provide source code to his versions (and does so). If those tools were public domain, Klaus could claim copyright over his modified versions, and could exercise sole control over their use. SuSE wrote Yast, and retains its rights as author of the software. Unlike Red Hat, it does not licence its software under the terms of the GPL, and I cannot take Yast and adapt it to work with Debian Linux. OTOH, last time I looked, I _could_ redistribute Yast, but only with SuSE Linux. Probably, that forbids me from taking SuSE Linux and changing it in any way, even so minor a way as adding a package or recompiling software with different optimisations, and redistributing the results with Yast. -- Cheers John. Join the "Linux Support by Small Businesses" list at http://mail.computerdatasafe.com.au/mailman/listinfo/lssb Copyright John Summerfield. Reproduction prohibited.
