[CS-FSLUG] Sydney Morning Herald: Cuba to Dump Windows for Linux

[Don Parris]

On Fri, 20 May 2005 23:21:30 -0700
David Aikema <daikema at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/20/05, Fred A. Miller <fmiller at lightlink.com> wrote:
> > On Friday 20 May 2005 9:35 pm, David Aikema wrote:
> > > On 5/20/05, Fred A. Miller <fmiller at lightlink.com> wrote:
> > > It could be that SuSE's manuals are fairly good.  What I recall from
> > > the days when I purchased boxed sets was that the manuals were little
> > > more than a
> > > 'click-this-option-to-take-you-to-the-next-installer-screen' sort of
> > > thing, but things may well be a whole lot better now.
> > 
> > 'Big improvement over the years.
> 
> Good to hear.  What have they added in to improve the manuals?
> 
> > > That said, do the manuals justify the entire purchase price, as for
> > > what you pay for a distribution release would probably buy you a
> > > pretty good book or two on the subject in question?  The remaining
> > > ($(purchase price) - $(what I would pay for the manual)) still seems
> > > to me to be little more than a donation to the group in question.
> > 
> > Considering the price of DVD +R DL media, I don't think so. Besides,
> > their staff has to eat like everyone else.
> 
> Would you be required to use dual-layer media, which I think is
> significantly more expensive than plain old DVD+R (the DVD+R discs can
> be had around here for perhaps $0.40 each)?  There are also other
> options including doing a network based installation (although I
> suppose that probably isn't something that home users are too likely
> to do), or perhaps preloading the SuSE ISOs on a spare partition if
> they intend to keep a dual-boot system (Mandrake allowed you to use
> this method of installation at one time).
> 
> I agree that their staff has to eat like any others, but given that I
> can (most likely) find someone willing to give me a copy of the
> software, the business model stills seems to rely on somewhat of a
> donation model.
> 
> > > As a whole SuSE may be profitable, but for a some percentage of their
> > > customers they may be loosing some money (a fairly small amount...
> > > unless there's a whole lot of security patches/updates).
> > 
> > I'm sure there's some loss - there always is.
> 
> I suppose that the average company in any industry probably has a
> subset of customers which it is currently loosing money on.
> 
> David
> 
> _______________________________________________

Why do you assume it's a loss?  Look, take my book, since I'm trying to live
the concept out.  Just because people share my book doesn't mean I've lost a
dime.  I never had their money to begin with.  It was never promised to me,
either.  I refuse to call sharing a loss.

I believe it's dangerous to take too seriously the idea of "lost income" on
the basis of what people may have gotten for free.  As you say, it may be
possible to "lose" some income.  Yet I don't think we can necessarily count
every non-sale as a "loss".  If we did, I would need to chalk up some losses
on my book already.  

In fact, the typical publisher would claim to be looking out for my
interests by pursuing those who shared my book.  The reality is they want us
to think that every act of sharing *is* a lost sale.  But how can it be lost
if it hasn't happened?  Let's follow this to it's logical conclusion.  The
city water utilities need to start suing the bottled water distributors for
selling water, unless they've purchased a license to redistribute the water.

The nature of software is more like air than water.  Because software is
different from tangible property, we need to treat it differently.  That
means a more appropriate business model.  No, we don't want to rely on "per
seat" sales for our bread and butter with this new model.  We could still
sell the "bottled" software.  Still, we would really want to focus our
core business in the areas of support & training, consulting, etc.

The current approach is basically an "old-school" approach.  It attempts to
sell software by the bottle.  A recent taste test aired on ABC revealed
that New York City's tap water tastes better than the most expensive bottled
water out there, and tied for #3 among six name brand labels.  Libre
software is the software on tap.  Sure, you can bottle it.  Chances are,
though, that you'll make more money from laying the pipeline, installing the
fixtures, fixing the leaky pipes, etc.

I hope I am exercising the Grace of God by enabling others to share -
without the need to feel guilty for having done so.  In so doing, I am
actually helping to restore some of the original intent of our copyright
laws.  It is God that moves the hearts of people to buy or not buy my book.
The most important thing for me, is that my brother/sister is free.  Why
should I enslave my brother/sister to a license that prohibits sharing?

If we buy Stallman's notion that greed drove the proprietary movement in its
beginnings - and the evidence for that seems overwhelming - then the
response of every Christian (in my opinion) ought to be to shudder.  To me,
libre software is an exercise in grace and the freedom that entails applied
specifically to technology.

Blessings,
Don
-- 
evangelinux    GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/                   http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/
"Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime
anywhere."