> > > Support contracts are not that profitable (I know, I was in the > business).. > > Ahem... Maybe you weren't a very good salesman. I think that RedHat is > doing very well considering that they are giving away GPL product. > > Considering the alternative (M$) who charges for the product and then > charges more for supporting, many corporation's CFO's are starting to see > the value in RH. > > Plus, they have to give it away... that's the double-edged sword that > GPL/opensource cutting.
GPL allows RH to charge a fee for supplying the product. It doesn't HAVE to give it away, though I could buy a set and run them off (like Cheapbytes) or mount them on my ftp server for all to download. It can limit that by including non-free essential software (consider YaST from SuSE). Just how effective that would be is hard to guess - probably some band of helpful souls would create a replacement. A shorter day may well work. It's nice to have a set of CDs, and at present I can download a fair bit before the distribution channels are up to speed. I'm much more likely to buy a boxed set if it's the fasted way to get it, and at present that's not so. There's also a problem in the retail outlets - if they can download it once and run off copies to sell cheaply at twice the gross profit of a boxed set, there's bot a lot of point to them to push the boxed set. -- Cheers John Summerfield Microsoft's most solid OS: http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/ Note: mail delivered to me is deemed to be intended for me, for my disposition. ============================== If you don't like being told you're wrong, be right! _______________________________________________ Redhat-devel-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-devel-list
