On Thursday, 05/20/2004 at 08:33 AST, David Heilman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I agree with you. But, my point is that if I can not buy the product without > jumping through hoops, > why should I think that I'll get good services if and when I get it. As far as > getting the updates > and not support, why not just buy a new release of the distribution every now > and then when needed. > All I want is to learn more about the operating system and keep myself skills > up to date.
As it turns out, the business model in this Brave New World doesn't support the concept of "just buy a new release". The major players don't sell distros; they sell their services (patches, security incident monitoring, e-mail support, phone support, how-to support, testing, etc.). A new copy of the distro is just a "freebie" that comes with the services. This is the price of "free software". It's "free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". And it is the hidden cost of maintaining your own kernel. Alan Altmark Sr. Software Engineer IBM z/VM Development ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
