Tim Edwards tim@registriesltd.com.au wrote:
Both Suse and Ubuntu have only Open Source packages on their downloadable CD/DVD images, just like Redhat.
The downloadable SuSE Linux DVD .iso image as of version 9.3 most certainly did _not_! And 10.0 seems to have similar issues, ones that Novell legal is still trying to classify and remove.
OpenSuSE seems to be a good effort in that regard so far. But Novell is still identifying some components that are not 100% redistributable.
In fact you'll find that most, if not all, Linux distros
only
have open source (ie. redistributable) software in their downloadable versions.
This is a common mis-nomer by most Linux users. The indemnification issue is real with a _lot_ of distros. I spent a good part of several weeks in late 2003 at a Fortune 20 company doing a brief for their legal.
As with RHEL or Centos you can add extra repos after the install to get closed-source (eg. Java) or questionable
(eg.
win32codecs) packages, for example for OpenSuse: http://www.opensuse.org/Package_Repositories
And that's where the "repository hell" comes in. ;-> That was the _original_context_ of my _entire_ point.
Those distros where you have 1 repository for everything are the problem. ;->
Far from being the exception with a few others, the way that Redhat does it is the rule.
Fedora and the resulting CentOS from RHEL, yes. But there are things not included in CentOS that RHEL does, because it is not 100% freely redistributable.