Disclaimer: I am a Canonical employee, although not officially speaking on behalf on my employer on this topic. I will restrict myself to pointing factual information that are available freely online.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 8/15/08, Etienne Goyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> There is no subscription model with Ubuntu:
>
> Yes there is. Canonical offers a subscription model on
> Ubuntu LTS -- from $120/node updates to $5,000/node SLAs.
I do not know where you got that from, but it is all wrong. There is no
subscription, never been, and probably never will. It would actually go
against the Ubuntu promise[1].
Canonical do sell technical support service (not sure if that is what
you mean by "SLA"). Off-the-shelf pricing is available online[2].
> Really? All five (5) years on Ubuntu LTS Server is free?
Yes[3].
> I thought there were separate three (3) Ubuntu LTS and
> five (5) year subscription for Ubuntu LTS Server?
No. The confusion may come from the fact that we maintain the Desktop
Edition for three (3) years, and the Server Edition for five (5) years
(see [3] above). In any cases, all updates are completely free for the
entire lifetime of a release.
> Also, separate Ubuntu from Ubuntu LTS from Ubuntu LTS Server
> subscriptions. Also understand there is no IHV/ISV guarantee
> with the free (of charge) releases. It's unfair to expect
> such out of Canonical, and they are already getting demonized
> by many end-users for making that same assumption that they did
> with Red Hat prior as well.
LTS are simply regular releases blessed with longer maintenance horizon.
All release are completely free of charge, including LTS. An IHV/ISV
decide for himself which release they deem worthy to certify against.
Canonical strongly encourage IHV/ISV to target LTS, but some choose to
certify non-LTS release nonetheless, and that is just fine. For
example, most hardware is certified across all Ubuntu releases, LTS or
not[4].
> Lastly, Dell more recently shot down Ubuntu LTS Server
> as a standard option with certification. They are not the
> only ones. That was sad to see because it's the subscription
> model where the money is, and Canonical has to be sustainable
> beyond Shuttleworth's charity and endowment.
I am stepping out of character and getting somewhat subjective here, but
there are other business models for Free Software outside of
subscription. Operating systems are commodities; there will still be
some money to be made selling per-seat copy of it (off-the-shelf or
through a subscription model), but the action is clearly moving upward
in the stack.
Also, a subscription model is not a requisite for certification of the
product by third-parties. I do not quite follow your train of thoughts
here.
> Actually, I'm looking at the $120/node update subscription option.
> Most home consumers doesn't know it exists, but corporate users
> very much do so.
Again, there is no such thing.
[1]: Featured prominently on the Ubuntu home page at
http://www.ubuntu.com/
[2]: http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid
(apologies for the shameless plug)
[3]: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/ubuntu/release-cycle
[4]: http://webapps.ubuntu.com/certification/
--
Etienne Goyer 0x3106BCC2
"For Bruce Schneier, SHA-1 is merely a compression algorithm."
http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/164
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