[ILUG] Re: Is Linux Dying?

[Dermot McGahon]

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 09:38:23 +0100, david jamison  
<david.jamison1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Im not sure if Ive missed the point here entirely.

Let's just say you need a bit of educating.

> For the layman, journalist and many that extol the virtues of open  
> source the "product" is free.  Again contrast to the "microsoft" model  
> where both software and documentation costs and there is no access to  
> the souce code.

And in the model we're talking about, software, documentation and support
cost and there is access to the source code. The only difference is the
access to the source code.

It's not free. Nil se saor in aisce.

(translation for Rick and others benefit - the Irish language has
  different words/phrases for free as in beer and free as in speech)

> o  selective copylefting (which reserves many proprietary rights to the
>    copyright owner, uniquely)

Tick.

> o  trademark-based branding, optionally tied to support

Tick.

> o  inclusion of some key components under proprietary licences

Tick.

> There are others.  See the FSB archives.

And we use others. Good, I'm delighted to know that our
open-source based company is not likely to go broke any time
soon.


> Are these issues then just comming into sharper focus now?

Perhaps, to an extent.


> All a question of stand point?

To a certain extent. Cost of ownership hits you when you own
something! We can argue all day about which is higher; I would
content that cost of ownerships is high no matter which system
you go with but is probably higher (I don't know by how much)
if you choose windows.

Look, this is a conversation for the pub. Please hassle us
there about this.


Dermot.
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