🚀 go-pugleaf

On 28 Sep 1998 23:19:01 GMT, dblake@dylan.ucsf.edu (Dave Blake )
wrote:

>Jason Clifford wrote:
>
>>Exactly. The ONLY way to make money from GPL software is to be the one
>>who installs and supports it commercially.
>
>No, that's not the only way. 
>
>You could sell manuals. Many people buy Redhat's distribution
>only to have a manual (and a meager one at that).
>
>O'Reilly makes a ton of cash from free software as well.

Writing and selling books about GPL software is, in my opinion, also
commercial support, so Jason's comment was correct.  Support doesn't
only mean helpdesk work.

>Red Hat PAYS the developers, and they WORK for Red Hat.
>They may produce GPL code and have intellectual freedom,
>but they are GREAT MARKETING for Red Hat and further establish
>Red Hat as the number one commercial linux consulting firm.

Agree with you on this one.  Red Hat are giving loads back to the open
source community, and are rightly getting a lot of credit for it.

>Red Hat is doing something I do not see anyone else doing -
>they are embracing a very different market strategy. They
>truly believe the future is in support and consulting
>for linux, and not in distribution sales. They want to 
>give away the best distribution possible to drive the OS
>market down to zero dollars.

Red Hat are still driven by the need for profit, and that will always
get in the way of creating the ideal distribution, but the
improvements brought about by their funding vastly outway the
negatives.

>It will be interesting if it works. Unless you live in
>Redmond.

Even at the pace Linux is moving at now, Microsoft won't have the
bailiffs in for a good many years yet.


Rob Wilderspin
--
"But I need it to crash once every few days - 
reboots are the only chance I get to sleep..."
----------------------= (send replies to rob@)