From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Thu Aug 03 2000 - 15:13:37 MDT
mjg223 wrote:
>
> On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> > So the 'Official' Red Hat CANNOT be reproduced, and I cannot sell or give away
> > the work of Red Hat (whether its their programming work or their Customer
> > Support work is really irrelevant, and a pointless distinction) without
> > compensating them to the degree they desire.
>
> Utter nonsense. I can have all the same bits without the pretty box for
> free if I grab it off their ftp server, minus some non-free added value
> junk. I can install it on as many machines as I want, I can burn CDs and
> pay you to take them from me, I can call it some thing else and start a
> company putting it a different box. (Witness Mandrake.)
>
> Calling the distinction between software and support pointless is
> insanity. The software is free, paying a human being to help you use it or
> adapt it to your purposes isn't. That's the whole freaking free-software
> business model - that's what RMS has been talking about for years.
SInce I work most of my time at a software company, I know there is functionally
no difference between the two. All the 'free' business model is doing is some
sort of hacker-leach lotus eating paradise, where people that know what they are
doing get the software for free, and the unit COST of producing that software
the distro distributor is externalized through the tech support process to make
the clueless pay for the free software the geeks are using. RedHat still has to
pay its programmers to produce code. Instead of making everyone pay their fair
share of the cost of producing that code that everyone benefits from, they make
the newbies pay for it all.
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