juridical Question on software and GPL

edA-qa mort-ora-y eda-qa at disemia.com
Sun Mar 28 16:33:41 UTC 2004


Niall Douglas wrote:
> free. RedHat's business model can never be particularly profitable - 
> it's based almost entirely on companies buying peace of mind rather 
> than anything tangible (consulting services and support can be found 
> elsewhere and cheaper). And if IBM committed all the way to Linux, it 

But is peace of mind not the only thing companies are also purchasing 
from Microsoft.  Certainly nobody can say what Microsoft is offering is 
any more tangible?

I believe you don't mean for your argument to go that way, but it is 
interesting how somehow it has come full circle in my view to see little 
difference between the offering of Red Hat and the offering of Microsoft 
-- save for that should Red Hat go bankrupt, the business has not lost 
everything, as they have an eay migration to another GNU/Linux distribution.

As for business not seeing how this free software can make money, for 
many business that is of little interest.  If it makes the software 
cheaper for them, then so be it, it is not in the purchases immediate 
cares whether his supplier goes bankrupt or not -- particularily when a 
supplier is easily replaceable.

-- 
edA-qa mort-ora-y
Idea Architect
http://disemia.com/




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