🚀 go-pugleaf

[posted+emailed]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Ben Russo wrote:

> > I absolutely agree. However, this has been my experience.
> > 
> > For the last three years I have been offering to install fully configured
> > Linux systems for the District government, for free; I have provided them
> > reams of hardcopy documentation, stressing the completely open and free
> > nature of Linux; I have even offered to simply _give_ them a harddrive
> > with Linux pre-installed and set up ready to go for any 486-or-better
> > machine with an SVGA card [1]. The system was a clone of a Slackware-based
> > system that I've had running without software fault for nearly four years,
> > mostly rebooting for hardware upgrades. It's loaded with security,
> > firewalls, masquerades, and in fact could have done Virtual Private
> > Networking.
> > 
> 
> <Excerpt>
> 
> The LINUX install fest isn't about any of that anyway.  The DC-LUG 
> install fest is to help individuals who are "newbies" and need a
> helping hand getting over the hurdle of installing an OS on a PC
> and getting the drivers and options configured so they can start
> using it.  The important thing is that *IF* they want the help it
> is there.
> 
> I think we should relax, be friendly, let Linux sell itself.
> Dell, HP, SGI, are all selling Servers with LINUX pre-installed.
> It won't be long before they are selling PC's with it.
> Then the commercial application development will come.
> 
> If people want Linux they can use it, if they want windows let them
> have it, the whole great thing about GPL software is that it offers
> a choice.  Don't try to force anything on anybody.  

Hmmm - I'm not in business as a vendor. The best way you could categorize
me in the present context is as a political activist. I'm coming from the
point of trying to help DC rise from the ashes of a persistent 
decades-long internal rot caused by terrible mismanagement. They're
sitting on a surplus right now, and their infosystems are still back in
the late 80s, and they're going to be buying boatloads of infosystems. It
bothers me that most of those will have software costs amounting to five
times the cost of the hardware. That means that they'll be spending six
times as much as they need to spend on infosystem which will mostly be
obsolete within five years, and that money really would be better spent on
roads and improved services. Hence my ire.

> 
> Start a petition to local government requesting a law that PC hardware
> be offered for a price that is not bundled in *ANY* way with Software
> or OS.  Software and OS's may be installed for customers, but the
> install price must be based on an hourly or category rate unrelated 
> to the brand name of the Software/OS being installed.

Why single out Intel hardware for legal restrictions over other platforms?
For instance, Apple doesn't make any OS for Intel architecture, and you
can't fit Windows CE (ick) on a Palm Pilot. 

Besides, the way that the DC Procurements system is set up, it practically
_requires_ vendors to bundle software with their hardware/systems, in any
event, _only whoever makes the most attractive offer of software bundled
free can win a competitive bid_. And that inherently guarantees that DC
gets locked into NT, with the associated excessive software costs.

> 
> This way hardware vendors could even offer free
> install and config.  But they would have to offer it free for all
> OS's..
> 
> 
> -Ben.
> 

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