Re: Suggestion for RedHat (was: RH vs Debian)
mark@ist.flinders.edu.au (Mark Phillips) writes:
> I don't blame the RedHat people for wanting to start up a company.
> People have to eat, and if you want to earn an income from working on
> Linux, then starting a linux based company is probably the way to do
> it.
>
One can't really blame any company for assembling and selling Linux
distributions. Companies like Redhat, SuSE, Caldera and whatever do
believe in their product and do give back to the community quite a
lot. Redhat pays developers for doing what they like to do, SuSE pays
one fo the XFree core developers for doing his job, Caldera has
provided a road for commercial software producers like Corel and
whatnot. We shouldn't forget that Debian as a whole benefits
immensely from these actions since the fruits of this paid works are
available for the whole community as well. Even CD vendors like
CheapBytes are giving back to the community (i've received a free CD
from them for my Debian involvement shipped to Germany two times in a
row now). But above all they all account mainly for the availability
of CD-ROM products on the software market and thus contributing
immensely to the presence of Linux as a purchasable product giving it
outstanding visibility.
This is BTW one of the weakest points of Debian. It is not very
visible as a product and it is comparatively hard to purchase a Debian
CD set on the normal market. Third party vendors unfortunately have
probably a hard time to plan ahead with Debian given the uncertain
release frequency. I think it's mostly due to this fact that Debian
is not really catching on at the free market. No product no gain.
I'd wish someone would stand up and start a Debian centered company
for a living just for the sake of making it a more viable option on
the CD market.
Cheers, P. *8^)
--
--------- Paul Seelig <pseelig@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de> -----------
African Music Archive - Institute for Ethnology and Africa Studies
Johannes Gutenberg-University - Forum 6 - 55099 Mainz/Germany
------------------- http://ntama.uni-mainz.de --------------------
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