[CLUE-Tech] GPL loopholes

[Jeremiah Stanley]

> Holy crap... that's ridiculous! I can see not wanting to sign up for Red
> Hat's Advanced Server support... but avoiding less than $1,000 a year
> for 15 machines? Geez... they probably spend more than that on coffee. 

Well, they do spend more than that on coffee. In fact, RedHat would
definitely take their money if they offered to pay, but, RedHat doesn't
expect them to pay. This is the nice difference in OSS. RedHat has a
policy of posting all the code that they use to make their OS. They do
this in two places usually. 1) ftp.redhat.com 2) updates.redhat.com. On
the FTP site they offer the distributions in individual package form
(you can make CD's from this and the updates if you want). On the
updates site they post all the packages (source and binary) that you can
use to update your system.

People would revolt in the streets if Microsoft made you pay for
updates. RedHat is taking the opposite approach: Drug Dealer Marketing.
And, for those of you not in the know, the first one is always free.
This gets RedHat into your IT department on the right price. And since
you can update it with their tool it is serviceable so it stays there.
All that their 7.3, 8 and now 9 releases are is one thing: marketing.
They are advertising by giving away their product.

Their hope by doing this is that you become familiar with their product.
I sure am. I have to think twice about doing fairly standard tasks in
Mandrake or Debian. Once this familiarity sets in it's a good thing. Now
you are ready to look at their Advanced Server (and it's brethren) for
service on your network. RH9 will be on your network as a fileserver
first, mailserver second. These are easy wins, the hard win is in the
application server. Years of yore have come and gone, the average MCSE
admin now knows of Linux, has used it at home, most likely goes to a
user group. He/she is not a Hardcore UNIX Weenie(tm) yet. Even MCSE's
buy support from contractors on Windows, why wouldn't they buy it on
Linux? This is where RedHat comes in. They want you to use Advanced
Server on your Oracle/DB2 database server. They want your MySQL/Web
cluster on it. And they want to give you support on it.

You can't get support from Microsoft when you spend $1200 on a Win2k
Server license (even more for Exchange, then throw in the Admin Packs
and the Developer Tools, etc, etc..). You just spent $1200 on a license.
Now, you have to pay a contractor to support you above and beyond. What
is your guarantee that they know what they speak of?

Now, you buy $1200 of software from RedHat. You didn't actually buy a
license, you can load this on as many machines as you like (alas, the
support is only on this one machine). You get free updates for as long
as RedHat supports the product (5 years right now on AS). You also just
got all the goodies that MS wants you to buy separate. You have a
software development platform, mailserver, and piles of administrivia
type documentation, for free. Now here is the real clincher, you get
support from RedHat. You aren't forced to find it elsewhere (you can I
suppose, your call). All of this for that same $1200.

Linux isn't successful because it is free. It is successful because
people work hard on it. The price will get you noticed, the value will
get you bought. The cost of $15 per server to pay RH to advertise to you
seems silly to me. Mirror the updates locally to save RH bandwidth. Buy
$40 disks if you've got the spare green, I don't, I bought the $12
copies online (I have a modem, KAAAAAHN!). And make sure you buy the
good coffee.

> No doubt ... I wish Linux had been at the current state of development
> when I was in college! Even then, I would have been happy to spring for
> the $30 Slackware set... 

This is the other area where Linux is going to be big. Give away your
software to students and they'll learn it. Once they learn it, they use
it. They now have a skill that in 10-15 years will be used because that
is what they know. All that time what they use adapted at the speed that
they did.

-- 
JStanley <miah at miah.org>
http://www.slavewage.com/