What SuSE's doing (was: Hello)

Marcel Kunath kunathma@pilot.msu.edu
Wed, 16 May 2001 15:45:50 -0400 (EDT)


Hey I am always up for a good bitch and moan. I am on the English SuSE list
and for people who know me I care to complain a lot. I have given SuSE my fair
share on their business practices. There have been a few things going on.

1. SuSE eliminated their evaluation distro and some people don't like this and
every week a person shows up on the list and asks where to find the iso. It's
quite annoying. I don't blame SuSE for discontnueing the iso scheme. I never
found it useful. I have been pressuring SuSE to eliminate CD distribution (at
least in the USA) and concentrate to become a ftp distro.

2. This brings us to the second point. SuSE with its 70 bucks a pro package is
still one of the most valued distros but people as I have been complaining why
we should buy multiple versions of a distro and always get the same manual
books with it. Hence people would much rather buy just a plain CD and see the
books sold separately.

3. Then there is guys like me who without shame say that I use SuSE but will
refuse to buy the distro because I don't want or need the books. I as well hate
handling CDs and they outdate so fast. I told them to start a member service
with advanced ftp access. But the biggest point is that I refuse to fund a
company and its ideology which seems to be undefined. SuSE becomes more and
more
commercial and their press releases are soaked with marketing hype. I said I do
not want to fund an endevour which was not explained to me. I don't want my
money to go to a closed source yast tool which dies when SuSE dies (if it dies).

I also think that the distros are branching off if they all develop their own
utilities. I don't mind yast. I just think its a worthless investment if it
can't be used on Debian or RedHat. Hence I want it to be open source and others
do too. SuSE though keeps quiet about this even though there are weekly
flamewars occuring about this.

I like my SuSE but heck I wish they would get back on the GPL path. I wish me
the days back when Linux was Linux without all the money schemes etc. I don't
have much hardware so I never used a different distribution but I fear the day
I do I will switch simply because I don't feel compelled by companies trying to
make money off of a distro.

I wish the hardware companies would buy out these small software houses. I
really don't care if RedHat is produced under the RedHat or IBM label. SuSE
under SuSE or Compaq. The longer these tiny companies crouch in the news the
more scrutiny they will undergo. It's a big deal on RedHat's balance sheet if
it loses 20 mill a year. But if IBM's software Linux division loses 20 million
it is easily hideable to the outsider and nobody can say anymore "Linux makes
no money". It's simply a small 20 mill loss to IBm which will be recovered
through more hardware sold. But these guys ain't getting it. They think they
have to do it by themselves. I think they need to hitch up with hardware to get
bundled on PC sales. They always talk about how they want to convert Windows
users but I don't see how a few ads do it. You got to bundle. No other way.

all personal opinion........

 mk

 > > "Marcel Kunath" <kunathma@pilot.msu.edu> wrote:
> > Yeah companies want money. But besides this there is full distro isos
> > available for SuSE 7.1 on the web.
> >
> > ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/japanese-7.1/
> >
> > These are the full version isos for the Japanese distribution. They also
> > feature an English install option if you are not familiar with Japanese.
>
> ...and after you've finished installing, your fonts and the man pages are all
> in kanji?  :-]
>
> Anyway, when the ISOs for SuSE 7.0 were removed from linuxiso.org, the text of

> the message from SuSE said this:
>
> "...the free version of SuSE 7.0 as provided on the evaluation CD image MAY
> NOT BE PROVIDED TO ANYONE IN EXCHANGE FOR MONEY but must be made freely
> available..." (emphasis mine)
>
> Basically, they will make the full x86 distribution (minus any commercial
> software) available as individual packages on their FTP site.  They will make
> a leaner (but still fully functional) x86 distribution available as an ISO,
> but they want to prohibit anyone from making money off it.  They provide full
> ISOs for PPC and Alpha architectures.
>
> Various people have said that their x86 distro policy conflicts with the GPL.

> I don't know what variety of crack they're smoking; their policy is legally
> suspect, will not make them any friends, and will not make them any money.  I
> have been a SuSE booster/user for quite some time and am seriously considering

> another distro for my next big upgrade.  (Debian if I can get some sort of
> better-than-dialup access at home....)
>
> --
> Matt G / Dances With Crows
> There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
> "I backed up my brain to tape, but tar says the tape contains no data...."
>
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--
Marcel Kunath

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