It is hard indeed to be in RMS's good list. As for Novell, it is history. It was fragmented and part of it is now owned by Attachmate and MS controls some of its patents. No surprise there. SuSE has its roots in Germany and was a well respected distribution before Novell got its hands on them. Boycott Novell was the result of Novell rolling over for Microsoft and signing an agreement not to sue each other and to share technology and sell each other's wares. That got lots of free software advocates upset. They wanted MS to specify which patents are being infringed. Also much of the bad PR goes back to Miguel de Icaza who worked for Novell and developed GNOME while also bring in Mono, a .NET clone for open source. Many free software advocates think Miguel is too cozy with MS and that he is in conflict of interest. They also see the licensing and non-release of source code for Mono as problematic.
That is no reason to avoid openSuSE IMO. It is a community based distro that just happens to have been part of a history best not remembered and maybe we should put it to rest because Novell and its deeds are behind us and Attachmate has little interest in openSuSE. You could just as easily avoid GNOME on the grounds that they brought Mono into Linux. Oops, I did that, too. ;) Roy Using Kubuntu 11.10, 64-bit Location: Canada On 9 December 2011 12:45, Matthew Dey <[email protected]> wrote: > Its hard for linux distros in general to stay on Santa Stallman's good list. > Mostly its one problem or another that causes the FSF to not endorse one > distro or the other. The ones that get the mark of approval though tend to > get it after bending over backwards in order to maintain a free software > only environment. On the good side of things those particular distros try > hard not to be free software hypocrites and their stuff is easily > redistributed because nobody's toes are being stepped on. The convenience > issues with free software only distros and multimedia can be a big pitfall > for many casual users though. > > -Matt > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users > Group. > To post a message, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] > For more options, visit our group at > http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup > References can be found at: http://goo.gl/anqri > Please remember to abide by our list rules (http://tinyurl.com/LUG-Rules or > http://cdn.fsdev.net/List-Rules.pdf) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup References can be found at: http://goo.gl/anqri Please remember to abide by our list rules (http://tinyurl.com/LUG-Rules or http://cdn.fsdev.net/List-Rules.pdf)
