Re: Re: (clug-talk) Broken KDE Control Center

[Johnny Stork]

Excellent and accurate response Kevin. You clearly have spent time either as a "grunion" trying to pitch "alternatives" such as OSS, to the Corporate elite and IT managers, or have/are one and hear the pitches from your own "grunions" and later have to sell it to upper-upper CTO, CIO levels. I couldnt have said it better and it truly reflects the "reality" of the situation, regardless of how strongly some us may feel about the idealistic or philosophical arguments. A long time ago most of us knew that BETA was far better technologically (video/sound quality) than VHS, but we all know who won out in the end. And when the video format wars were in high gear and the winner was clear, I doubt there were many successful attempts at creating a large market for BETA Max movies. Sometimes, in spite of great intentions, strong support and blatantly obvious justifications, public/market trends go off in their own directions. Hence the "dynamic" and "chaotic" nature of stock markets (determined more by human/psychological factors than statistics), social trends and human/public behavior. Yes OSS is a GRAND, "righteous" and "virtuous" breath of fresh air in the stagnant, greedy and over-commercialized world of software and "knowledge sharing". If it were not this way, and if I did not agree with the philosophical implications, I would not be trying to create a business around OSS. But like you said, for the Enterprise/Commercial customer, it is the recognised, most "popular" but also well supported platforms that will get the cheques. Regarding Samsung Contact...I have been trying to get a tar/rpm to try out but have not had much luck from their site. I do beleive there is a demo/limited client version available? If you have one for RH 7x or 8, is there any chance of sending it to me or providing a link? Cheers.. > > > -----Original message----- > From: "Kevin Anderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Date: 11/19/2002(Tue) 10:34am > Subject: Re: (clug-talk) Broken KDE Control Center > > > can someone remind me when Free software came down to popularity and > > recognition? > > > > as far as i'm concerned, it's all about choice and the ability to move to > the > > vendor that serves your needs. and even if that wasn't a basic tenet of > open > > source, the market is still far too young to declare a winner already, no? > > > I'd like an email package for two installs happening simultaneously. When I > said I run Gentoo, they told me they'd be happy to support it if I fdisk, > and install Red Hat. They worded it different, but that's what they meant. > > They don't have an install for Gentoo, and frankly, I can't even fake it, > since they require different versions of Glibc, GCC, etc (Boy...lots of > acronyms ending in c) than what this machine is set up with. > > I understand what you're saying, and I agree, but it doesn't work like that > in real world homogenous environments. Red Hat is the biggest Distro, and > therefore, developers targeting a corporate audience will develop for RH. > Right or wrong doesn't matter. Debian probably has a bigger install base, > but still, Red Hat is the target. > > Here's my choices for email. Run a RH server, and install Samsung Contact, > or run a legacy Windows server and run another legacy product, Exchange. > > NDS, Domino, etc. It doesn't matter. Big closed source apps will require a > particular distro. > > The truth is that sometimes we need to run closed source code. And as much > as Linux is the buzzword, RH is the distro that people support, again, with > Suse a close second. In a while, once everything is open source, then it > won't be a problem, but for now, there are limits to what can be > accomplished with what distro. > > We use what works. For now, that will mean depending on a particular > distro. Further, RH is splashed in front of the same audience as MS. PHBs > sign the paychecks, so THEY need to buy into the idea of using a given type > of software. It's hell to try to get approval to buy pizza for the Tridge, > similarly, I won't even bother asking to buy a thong to support KDE. If KDE > asked for $10000 for license fees, meaning the paper the GNU license was > printed on, I could get that approved, but a thong or a t-shirt? Probably > not. This is the problem with open source and GNU. I'm not too sure what > you do for money, but KDE won't be paying your bills, I suspect. And that's > a shame. I like that Open Source is free. I like having the option to not > pay for it. But when I install it for a company, and they know that they'll > make several million (or billion) dollars because of it they have no problem > contributing. But how do they do it so that it can pass an audit? I don't > know how, but developers need to find a way to make something useful and > sell it for a price that is legitimate. Sell a subscription to your support > newsgroups. You can leave them free as well. But support subscription is > something I can justify a corporate expense for. Non-charitable donations > are not. > > Red Hat has done that. I can buy a copy of software from them. They get my > cash, and they grow. Other than consulting fees, I'm not too sure how I can > even pay Gentoo for the software I'm running of theirs. Never mind BIND, or > something like that. Like 'em or hate 'em, RH does contribute back to the > OSS community even if it's just by paying a salary for someone writing code. > > Maybe I don't "get" OSS. But frankly, if I want to pay you for something, > even if you're not asking, I'd like to know how, and I'd like to be able to. > But I need to have something that I'm buying. Corporations have no problem > paying for things they use, not big ones anyway. Paying for something would > allow developers to work full time at developing, instead of struggling to > find work somewhere else and improving Linux in their spare time. > > I get asked all the time, how much will it cost to run Linux. I can't > answer 2 kde Thongs, and pizza for Canberra's User Group. Actually, Samba > is a great example. They finally said listen, rather than Pizza, we > actually do need some cash to host our site, and send people to conferences. > That notice was up for less than a month before IBM said "done, go back to > coding, and stop worrying about money. We can provide that." We get good > value out of these products. I'd like to offer to help finance them. That > way, the need for closed source software, running on Red Hat only will > dimish, because OSS replacements can be written and thereby the need to have > a given distro is gone. > > Kev. > > > ________________________________ Open Enterprise Solutions Open Solutions for an Open World Johnny Stork, BA Calgary, AB Canada http://www.openenterprise.ca http://www.open-solutions.ca