Why?
coz i personally think of u as blessed by RMS ( jtd fan following : this is a complement to JTD ) :-)
does this not apply to other distributions ?
The Act of signing such an agreement is like a tacit acknowledgement of Suse having code which is in violation.
it is not ! everytime this point was raised novell has got a press release and some other gyan distributed saying they never acknowledge any patent violation.
But more important, the other distros did not sign a deal with M$
absolving themselves and making u liable. The other distro will be liable first. U will ofcourse get bitten with a cease and desist notice in the case of other (violating) distros. Which is why i stick to debian.
i m not sure if i read it correctly but i remembering read it as "ms will not sue novell customers ever". i cud be wrong coz i donot read fine lines in different permutations / combinations.
have you or members of the list gone thru the several announcement and irc transcripts ?
Using suse without (or even with) reading carefully the terms of
distribution would be termed willful violation whenever M$ chooses to sue Novell's non paying customers. But Novell is generous to a fault u know - U have a waiver of 180 days for any freebeer downloads. After which u can reinstall from a new dowload for a further 180 days ad nauseum.
i m not a lawyer . but i think using suse is great . its amazingly cool and novell will never screwup such big time with its customers. if things had been so evil major contributors wud have stepped out after the announcement similar to the one after kde / gnome issue.
my take is novell is not evil . suse rocks and i will support it always :) the way i see this is ms has a subtle way of stepping into the oss market.
PS : this doesnot by any means suggest that other distros are not.
HRB