Re: [aclug-L] Linux on store shelves

[Jonathan Hall <jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's not the tech support that RH provides that I don't like.  It's the
proprietarizing that they do.  All the contracts they're signing with
other large companys (Corel, Intel, etc) that I don't like.  With all the
support of large companies going into a single Linux distribution, it
wouldn't be hard for RedHat to start making packages that only work with
RedHat.  Imagine that Corel WordPerfect Suite worked only with RedHat,
because it required some special extensions that were (c) RH, and illegal
to distribute with another distribution.  Then to use WordPerfect for
Linux, you would HAVE to buy RedHat.

Now it obviously hasn't gotten to this yet... but I can see it
potentially moving that direction.

But even if it never gets that far, compaines like Corel who have
contracts with RH don't have as much motivation to make their product work
with Debian, Slackware, SuSE, TurboLinux, Caldera, or any of the many
other distributions, because they make more money developing their product
specifically for Red Hat.

Anyway... that's my two cents.

I think Linux should be FREE.  Even if you want to pay for tech support,
the operating system and accompanying packages should be free.  Which
means not paying Red Hat Software to use Linux.

I would have no problem buying simply a Linux Support Contract, or
something (although I wouldn't do it myself, and think that most of the
time there would be better alternatives).


> Most companies are conditioned to expect support for their software, and
> many IT managers get a very uneasy feeling when you start talking about
> free support that depends upon someone being nice to you on a news
> group...  Red Hat allows you to get the feeling of support, w/o a very
> large price.  Caldera does the same thing, and there are many companies
> that provide support contracts for linux such as the one I work for
> right now.  This is not a bad thing I don't think.
> 
> I agree that Red Hat does not always conduct itself the way I would
> like, but they are good for linux in the overall view.  We just need to
> be careful that they don't get too big and start trying to control the
> inovation of Linux.  But as long as there are multiple distributions,
> that's not likely to happen.
> 
> -= Bob =-
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  Jonathan Hall  *  jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx  *  PGP public key available
 Systems Admin, Future Internet Services; Goessel, KS * (316) 367-2487
         http://www.futureks.net  *  PGP Key ID: FE 00 FD 51
         -=  Running Debian GNU/Linux 2.0, kernel 2.0.36  =-
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