On September 15, 2003 02:25 am, T. Ribbrock wrote: > > You decide that as Mandrake is getting money from elsewhere you can take > > the free version. All I see from you is: If I have to pay, I won't take > > it, because Mandrake gets enough money from elsewhere. > > <sigh> No. That's *not* what I'm saying. Maybe I need to differentiate > more: Mandrake makes one Linux distro, but many products. I've tested > the distro, as packed in the product "9.1 download edition". I liked > what I saw. It's a good distro. So I want to use it. At the same time, > I *do* agree to "fair price for a fair product", so I'm quite willing > to buy the product "standard edition" to get the distro. However, then > Mandrake announced their stance with regard to third-party advertising > in their products. What they announced (forcing third-party ads on > paying customers) is a business practice I do *not* like, no matter > from whom. Hence, I do *not* like the product anymore, even though I > do like the distro, cause I do *not* want to support that type of > business practice.
Just curious here...but how do you differenciate between the product and the distro? Both look curiously the same to me. As I've kept quiet on this list about the ads let me state my own position. I grew up in a country where ads are ubiquitous. They're everywhere. And I've also developed a skill that allows me to filter out what I don't want to see. Also, as I tend to go have coffee or lunch while I'm upgrading I don't have the problem at looking at things I don't want to see. So, if the people paying for the ads think I'm looking at them they're probably sadly mistaken. That said, I really don't have a problem with it. Ads do serve two purposes. The first is to simply inform about products and services and the second, of course, is to sell said products or services. If a Micro$oft ad shows up while I'm installing I'm more likely to laugh than I am to do much of anything else. As for Open Software, Linux and other related ads perhaps I will find them interesting. Perhaps there will be a small shop out there that just developed a killer way to configure IPTables (a confusing mess at best) with relative simplicity. I'd probably look into it. Small shops don't qualify, to me, as big, bad corporations. Perhaps they do to you. To me they qualify as a couple or three people trying to eek out a bit of a living from Linux/BSD etc or simply get some support to pay the bills for what they've done. I hardly find that insulting. A side note here...have a boo at Freshmeat or SourceForge and see how many developers have links for donations. I don't think they're looking for a sandwich mostly because PayPal doesn't trade in those. Ed said something about the USA earlier..that commercial influences are everywhere in government there. I live in Canada and the same applies here as it does in every other developed country and a lot of developing countries in the world. At least in so-called first-rank nations this influence is frequently offset by the labour movement, NGOs and a little thing called public opinion. And, oh yes, Mandrake does have a couple of employees in Canada. > That leaves only the product "download edition" if I do want the distro, > which is a pity. Which simply means getting something for nothing. Open source and free software is NOT free as in beer, it is free as in available, modifiable and contributable. People are perfectly free to try to make a living on it. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has to pay the bills. This includes the developers of OpenBSD, unless they are independantly wealthy. Except perhaps for you. > If you want to call this constructed just because you don't agree with > the reasoning, fine, be my guest. In that case we'll have to agree to > disagree, as to me, they are *very* valid reasons - otherwise I > wouldn't spend the time presenting them. Just "freeloading" can be had > with much less effort... ;-) > > Regards, > > Thomas Justifying it can be take a lot of effort, too. Perhaps I'd feel better if you could tell me one patch you contributed to a CVS, one contribution you made to a project even at high level design, one thing you've done other than complain. At least then I'd have to rethink my opinion that you are freeloading and wasting a lot of email space justifying it. Regards, ttfn John
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