Some guy is selling DVD-R's with SUSE 9.1 on a norwegian auction site, as far as I know this is illegal. Does anyone have any sites I can point the administrators of the auction site to so to make them aware of that what this user is doing is illegal?

Tell me, why is it illegal to sell SuSE 9.1 on DVD-R's?

There are plenty of auction places selling SuSE 9.1 on CD's, DVD-R's, etc., and various websites too.

If it is legal then I stand corrected. But I thought it wasn't, it containing commercial software and all. Am I way off?

Hmm, thinking about it... you may be correct; however it won't stop me ordering it. Just the other day I purchased SuSE 9.1 Pro for £6 - No booklet or anything like that, however 5 CD's for only £6 is very good I think. I could have got the 5 CD's and a DVD for £8 however I'm not sure if my laptop can read 'em. Before when I had Norton, I couldn't read either CD-RW's, nor DVD's, however now I can read CD-RW's cause I removed Norton, so many I can read DVD's too now (since it's a DVD-ROM)... eitherway though, very pleased with the price I paid for the 5 CD's.

Yeah, sure it's cheap. But if it's not legal I'd like to stop this guy, mainly because him doing illegal stuff will reuin things for others trying to sell linux on this auction site (including possibly me)

Well, I've heard it's not legal to purchase SuSE linux CD's from anyone/anywhere else other than directly from SuSE and authorised people/places; but aren't you able to download SuSE a few months after it has been released?

Meaning you could download it, and then burn the CD's or DVD's and then sell 'em on auction or anywhere else. I don't see anything wrong with that if you are able to download them.

One is not able to download the iso files for burning SUSE Pro, but given access to an ftp install wich doesn't contain the commercial software.

how many people here have legal copies of windows xp? if u heard of someone selling illegal copies of windows xp are you then going to email microsoft? *giggle*

My 2 cents: Suse does not make their ISO images available for download, and to the best of my knowledge has not released them on DVD, and so I'd agree this sounds questionable. In any event, I would suggest just contacting Suse and pass along this info to them. If Suse objects to this auction they will pursue it, but if they are OK with it, they'll let it go. Either way, it seems to me that it would be Suse's decision as to what next steps (if any) they might want to take. -- J.W.

As a side note: Per the LQ Rules, any discussions promoting warez, cracking, pirating, etc, on the LQ boards are prohibited and will not be tolerated. Therefore, don't post any URL's to this, don't ask for where you can find it, etc.

Hi on the SUSe 9.1 Pro front my son contracted Novell direct and received 3 DVD's containing their Enterprise net work solutions for evaluation....
One of the DVD's contains ISO's of SUSE 8.2 pro, and another is a full working install from DVD 9.1 Pro. The nice looking triple DVD holder does not appear to contain any arduous clauses, I have yet to find a down side to it.
So who needs an internet auction site?

Mad Malc

You can download the entire DVD off so SuprNova and other bittorrent sites. I do fear that one day the file sharing world will come crashing down, but it is not this day.

I installed the free version of SuSe 9.1 and it is pure garbage. I can see why they give that one away for free. You have to go searching for hundreds of packages and dependencies.

I installed the full DVD that I downloaded and discovered that YES, It may actually be worth purchasing. It has everything and more. Really puts fedora to shame and I'm an avid fedora user.

It's *not* illegal at all to distribute and sell copies of SuSE Linux.

Even YAST can be free distributed. What do you mean by commercial programs ??

There arent such programs with SuSE.

You are even allowed to copy the SuSE Manual (parts or full) as long as you
copy the copyright information. That's what is stated on the copyright manual remark.

However, if you decide to buy from SuSE then you get also installation support and
last but not least you are supporteing one of the Linux Pioneers in his efforts to
promote Linux.

So it's more an ethic then a legal question.

Besides, nothing increases the use of a particular software more than piracy. Should we really be worried about people pirating Linux distros? It seems to me that at this early phase of adoption there are far more important issues at hand (SCO, Microsoft anti-trust actions, educating the masses, etc). SuSE seems to be doing fine, and that is what counts. If Novell sees this as a problem, they will likely take action against people selling their stuff. If not, why worry about it.

I purchased SuSE 9.0 and 9.1 Professional direct from SuSE. It made sense to buy it. SuSE gets all the money from the sale, and I get these cool SuSE books and installation support (had I needed it). It is my belief that Novell/SuSE is our best bet for mass adoption of Linux, so help them succeed. [/rant]

Checkout the SUSE download site that offers free versions:

http://sdb.suse.de/sdb/en/html/lmuel..._internet.html

You'll notice several references to how the free FTP version is stripped of comercial software including:

The major differences from the purchasable SuSE Linux version is
* no printed handbook (included as files)
* no installation support
* lack of many commercial packages (StarOffice, OSS, etc.)

I'd also imagine that the xmms mp3 plugin is proprietary (which is why with Redhat/Fedora the plugin is notably absent and must be dowloaded seperately). I'm not sure of how that license works, but I doubt you are alowed to distribute it without paying a royalty. Up until fairly recently, YAST was proprietary as well.

YAST was not GPL but could be distributed for free, also in the past.

No Installation support does not mean that copying and distributing SuSE is illegal.
StarOffoce could be easily *legaly* downloaded for free.

It would be something different if StarOffice was provided with SuSE
instead of OpenOffice. Howver this is not the case.

MP3 support is provided by LAME which is free of charge.

Printed Handbook can be copied and distributed. Take a look on th ecopyright remark
of teh printed Handbook.