Did you try ? I am not sure.

But even if they were not publically available (which I do not know), anyone can distribute those (that can legally be distributed) and strip the trademark information, similarly to CentOS. All you need is people that have a support contract anyway (or you could ask for donations to buy a support contract).

Sure, Novell could help by making them publically available and by giving the rules to play by (which according to Pascal Bleser they are doing now), but they do not have to in order for a community to do it anyway.

But you are correct, if they are not available without a cost, it may be relevant to the reasons why there is no free or Open Source SLES community today.