Seing how people are unhappy with distributors for various reasons, I wanted
to throw in my 2 cents.
Having observed the Linux industry since the early days there's something
which has always kept me curious, namely Profits to keep me happy and Support
to keep customers happy.
Lets make a few operating points:
As a business owner I can say that I like being able to get good s/w for free.
As a developer I like the idea of my product being in use worldwide. (Let's
assume my license said it would have to be available for free.)
As a business owner I like getting paid for all the support I give.
Using the Internet would probably drive in people who would be willing to pay
for my services in larger volume than just dealing with my geographical area.
Imagine you write one or several programs, or just offer them, for free
online. Let's say it's REALLY popular. And your phone number/email is listed
for questions. How will you handle all the dumb and not so dumb questions you
WILL get?
You would soon not be doing anything but answering questions all day long.
Your income would dwindle and that would be that. Am I wrong?
So you need to balance it in a way that makes sense. Quality, Tools, Time and
Cost are four points of development that your customer (in a sound business)
cannot control. They can pick two (or three in some combinations) but not
all. What we see is how RedHat, SuSE and all are learning how to balance
this. RedHat has, in my opinion, the best business know how. (Also the only
one who's profitable.)
In the past I've said that I don't mind paying for Linux. What's important to
me is the products I end up with. In the early days we did not even have any
decent install tool. Today most new Linux users are supposed to be coming
from the user ranks. So a sweet installer is a must. This takes a great deal
of effort to produce, support and maintain.
The obvious thing is that we all have to be able to make a profit or an
exchange for our services. Starting with a free O/S is a great way of driving
in people but will not hold in the long run with profit. I think that the
best approach is to offer something which drives in people at little or no
cost to get familiar with you, and then to offer a main service/product.
We are spoiled of having had ten years of a great O/S for free. Hopefully
we'll see happy mediums that satisfies all our desires, but most likely we'll
have to do some tradeoffs.
Thanks for listening!
--Steve
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