On Tuesday 19 March 2002 17:26, sda wrote: [snippet] > Why are they asking for $ and not emphasizing what the benefits are? Why > are they giving away the ISO's for free rather than following SuSE's > successful implementation of a preview non-installable iso? If they did > this alone, it would cut down on the freeloaders burning the distro and > not contributing.
Again, there seems to be some unclearness about the nature of free software. Someone who copies, uses or redistributes software is not a freeloader, he/she is a user. If he/she contributes something, such as time, money or code, he/she is a contributor (said Robin, rather tautologically). Even someone who downloads the system, uses it and recommends it to friends is contributing, albeit minimally. There may be people out there who give financial support, write code, document it, and answer questions on mailing lists, but they can probably be counted on your fingers. How many people here actually started their Linux experience by paying for an official distribution (I don't count redistributed CDs from Cheapbytes etc.)? And how many who _did_ earn under $15,000 p.a. (a good wage by world standards, BTW)? Robin
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