On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Alan Cox wrote: > 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
Well said, Alan! Add to the authors the army of volunteers who spend countless hours helping new users, providing unpaid-for support for this free software. SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake and the others make money out of this. However, without the donations of the authors and of the supporters, it would not work nearly as well. Red Hat does the right thing as far as its software licences go, thoguh it uses trademark law to muddy the waters somewhat, and recent changes seem intended to make it harder for unaffiliated people to make money out of supporting their product. I can't comment on other commercial vendors, not being familiar with their products. -- Cheers John. Join the "Linux Support by Small Businesses" list at http://mail.computerdatasafe.com.au/mailman/listinfo/lssb
