Adding to Faisal's answer; can you legally redistribute Windows? Can you take a look at the source code?
The concept of Open Source is not working for free. There are many large projects that hire professional paid programmers. That doesn't make them less Open Source. On the other hand, there are many high quality Open Source projects that developers work on free of charge, a good example is PHP. Microsoft doesn't charge you money for support when you buy Windows. This is a software license, you usually don't call Microsoft when you have a problem with your computer. In fact, you can't unless you bought a support package. On the other hand, when you buy a commercial Linux distro, you are paying for the price of the media (CD, manuals, ..etc) and possibly support. - Ammar On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Omar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Salam Alaikom. > > I have a friend in college, and we've been arguing a couple of days ago > about Linux and FOSS. And he seems to almost believe that FOSS is > nothing but another marketing technique. > > And he tends to prove that by mentioning the fact that Red Hat used to > give their Linux distro to everyone free of charge, but they no longer > do that, except for Red Hat's twin, Fedora, which is mainly a > development branch. > > And he also says that Microsoft charges you for Windows in order to > provide you with technical support. While Ubuntu is given to you for > free, and it comes to you with absolutely no warranty. > > And he also mentioned that, in his own opinion, nobody works for free, > and everything happens for a reason, so this means that there is no such > thing called: "FOSS programmers don't work for money. " > > So, this way, in his own opinion, he arrived at the fact that being open > source is nothing but a mere marketing trick, and Ubuntu might become > closed and start forcing you to buy their products at any time. > > Oh yeah, he also mentioned that, for example, MySQL used to be free, but > now that it's bought by IBM (And I'm not sure where he got that > information, 'coz Wikipedia, for example, doesn't mention anything about > that) it won't stay free the way it was before. > > Can you please help me understand FOSS, so that I'll be able to answer > him? > > Thanks in advance. > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jolug" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Jolug?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
