It's also about the value of getting a reasonably coherent distribution, and not just a collection of no-cost software simply thrown onto a CD. While there is a tremendous amount of hard work done by the authors of the software, putting together a distribution, testing it, and supporting it is also a very hard job. Just look at all the complaints on this mailing list about how difficult it can be to get just _one_ package compiled on Linux/390.
All the Linux distributors put in some hard work. They deserve to be compensated for it, at least to some extent. Yes, it's not required, but not everything that is deserved is required, and vice versa. If SuSE, Red Hat, and all the others went out of business, we all would be much the poorer for it. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Alan Cox [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 2:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: SLES 8 On Wed, 2003-03-26 at 17:14, Rich Smrcina wrote: > Then SuSE doesn't get compensated for their hard work, they stop making money > and stop making a distribution. Who wins? *WHOSE* hard work ???? Most of the SuSE stuff is free software. It's not all SuSE's work, its not all Red Hat's work. It is intended to be out there, free for all. SuSE ship a few proprietary bits as well which may have other licenses. Its about the value of the service and support. Why did they specify SuSE ? It wasn't because someone could put it up for free download, or they would just have grabbed debian from ftp, or a $150 CD set with free cookie recipes Alan
