[plug] Suse Enterprise Desktop/Server

[Bernd Felsche]

"Chris Watt" <something.rotten at gmail.com> writes:

>I'm quite seriously looking into SUSE at teh moment and was wondering
>if anyone had any experience with their licensing scheme.  They list
>at $50 per machine, so I assume it is an MS style thing where you need
>a key for each installation?  Also what is teh redistribution of it
>like?  If I want to give it to someone do they then have to buy a key
>for it?

The premium SUSE product is licenced to an end-user.

AFAICT, the licence doesn't permit "splitting" an existing licence
to a third party. There is a separate update service that comes with
the Enterprise SUSE products.

The normal SUSE Linux product is "freely" licenced. Only one person
can register a copy and then have initial support. There's nothing
to stop you [from my reading of the licence] from installing on a
third party's computer or somebody borrowing your media to do so
themselves. They get no support from SuSE beyond the publically
available patches.

OpenSUSE can be copies freely but provides "no support". It's
downloadable and has the same patches as the normal boxed version.
[non-Enterprise]
-- 
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