Hi, I am new to this forum and openSUSE so apologies if this question is in the correct area.
My company wishes to use openSUSE as the platform for our software applications. openSUSE will be preinstalled on our hardware along with our applications. The customer will be purchasing the system hardware from us but not paying for openSUSE itself or its installation.
I have read the legal documentation regarding openSUSE’s use and I am still unclear on this subject. Is this a legal use of openSUSE and if not under what circumstances could we do this or what criteria would we have to meet?
On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 09:36 +0000, saintnz wrote:
> Hi, I am new to this forum and openSUSE so apologies if this question is
> in the correct area.
>
> My company wishes to use openSUSE as the platform for our software
> applications. openSUSE will be preinstalled on our hardware along with
> our applications. The customer will be purchasing the system hardware
> from us but not paying for openSUSE itself or its installation.
>
> I have read the legal documentation regarding openSUSE’s use and I am
> still unclear on this subject. Is this a legal use of openSUSE and if
> not under what circumstances could we do this or what criteria would we
> have to meet?
>
> Many thanks.
Unfortunately there may be a trademark and branding issue.
Not sure if somebody will answer here… If we’re lucky, openSUSE
won’t have any issues.
Thank you to everybody for their responses to my question.
I should add that the intention is to use openSuse as a web server so effectively the users will only actually be communicating with the system (or rather our applications) via their browser. I’m not sure if this makes any difference, I am assuming not.
If we are required to add any trademark or copyright notices in our documentation or anything then we can certainly do this.
That should be fine. Just give the owners of the hardware a copy of the install media. What you are effectively doing is selling the hardware and also doing an install and configure for them. You must not claim that the software is covered by your trademarks; it must be clear that it’s something that you have installed for them.
On 02/04/2009 saintnz wrote:
> I have read the legal documentation regarding openSUSE’s use and I am
> still unclear on this subject.
Me too. As cj_cox pointed out, branding might be a problem. The license says
“This agreement permits you to distribute unmodified copies of openSUSE 11.1 using the “openSUSE” trademark on the condition that you follow The openSUSE Project’s trademark guidelines located at http://www.opensuse.org/Legal. You must abide by these trademark guidelines when distributing openSUSE 11.1, regardless of whether openSUSE 11.1 has been modified.”
The URL basically just points to the Novell trademark rules, and that’s where I get lost in lawyer gibberish.
I’ll try and find some more information on your specific problem. Hang on.
I would just get them to agree to the terms of the opensuse/linux gpl for the os. You are supplying a value added service which is fine - it could probably run on any other version of linux. You need to supply a separate agreement for your own software if it is different to the gpl.
With 11.1 there is no problem as the main medium consist of open
source only. So, the forums guy is allowed to redistribute openSUSE
with his hardware.
Out of our licence:
"With the potential exception of certain firmware files, the license
terms for the components permit you to copy, modify, and redistribute
the component, in both source code and binary code forms. "
"This agreement permits you to distribute unmodified copies of
openSUSE 11.1 using the “openSUSE” trademark on the condition that
you follow the openSUSE Project’s trademark guidelines located at Legal - openSUSE. "
Please note that the trademark guidelines don’t exist yet but we’re
working on them right now. One thing is very clear, if anybody just
distribute unmodified versions of openSUSE everybody can use our
trademark.
