<Long rant on soapbox> And isn't Redhat starting to do the same thing (charging for products, like postgresql)? GreatBridge also officially died today, Suse is on life support, VA no longer sells hardware and is selling software, Loki is all but gone, don't know anything about Debian, and Mandrake I don't think is in a "healthy" state either, and probably a dozen or so other "open source" companies have died quick deaths in the last year(probably more). There is nothing wrong with the open source model, it's the open source business model that's flawed. The problem isn't that they are trying to sell software, it's that they are trying to sell something that can be obtained for free. "But they are selling support for the software", well so what? you can get that for free to (this forum is a small example). So if nobody buys the software or support, what can they sell? The only thing I can think of is proprietary software. Remember a business exists to make money, which in a way directly contradicts the open source model doesn't it? What they need to do is start creating some, and bundle the OS with it (In addition to giving the OS away)if the want to stay in business. There is so much opportunity for products in the linux world that do not exist it's astounding. But then I guess that also begs the question "Will open source advocates and users buy that software?". Suddenly makes me wonder how Oracle is selling on Linux, anyone know? I think another problem is that nobody is aggressively selling linux to large OEM's, on any level (am I wrong here?). Sure IBM is dumping $1 billion into it, but even IBM only has a small handful of machines they offer it on. Dell tried it and dropped it because of lack of interest(their lack of marketing sure didn't help though). And compare that to M$ spending $1 billion on marketing winXP alone. I have been using Redhat linux since 5.2, and have store bought every one. I'm using Ximian Gnome and the beta's of Evolution, and will buy that on CD when Evo goes gold. I have no problems buying software that I will use and get my money's worth for (and just to add, I haven't purchased an M$ product since DOS 6.22, excluding new hardware purchases). Since I don't contribute code to the open source community, I figure it's my way of supporting it(if I knew c++ I would be I'm sure). However I think I'm a minority in that. Everybody I seem to talk to just downloads it and burns it to cd. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a flame, or a bash on open source or linux in any way. I like linux and what it can do. It's the businesses that are drowning, and if they could at least bellow out the phrase "Web Services" in between gulps of water (has any distro company even mentioned the phrase?) it would be a start. Wouldn't it be something if IBM were to gobble up the 2 or 3 largest distro companies and combine all the best parts and continue to develop it and give it away, support it across all models, and allow other OEM's to freely install it on their systems for sale? Just IBM and HewlettCom-Paqard selling all models with it would nearly end the MS monopoly(or dent it real good). The irony of IBM doing that to M$ is to humorous to ignore too. But that's just my opinion...I could be wrong. </Long rant on soapbox> Doug -----Original Message----- From: tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org]On Behalf Of Bob Tanner Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 10:40 PM To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org Subject: [TCLUG] Bye-bye Caldera <soapbox> I remember when Ransom got up at Linux Expo last year and pitched what is now called Volution. Most of the geeks in the crowd where impressed. -BUT- when he dodged the question on license and price. I got the feeling he was just another parasite to the open source community. As volution matured, and pricing came out, the per-seat license made it cost prohibitive. Real Time looked for another solution. Getting a gold cd from them for a trial, I noticed all these lovely open source components as part of volution (openldap, openssl, etc). Of course, the sales-rep said we where paying for the non-GPL aspects and media. Love said you can't be a viable business doing all open source. Well, looks like you don't do much better when you are -not- an open source company. Should have kept it open source and at least you'd have the community support for you when times are hard. But all Love did was alienate the community (like me) and push people towards RedHat and Debian. </soapbox> -- Bob Tanner <tanner at real-time.com> | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org | Fax : (952)943-8500 Key fingerprint = 6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9 _______________________________________________ tclug-list mailing list tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list