Change for Caldera OpenLinux Workstation

[Werner Koch]

 || On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 09:32:14 +0200
 || Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz at hbv.org> wrote: 

 sm> want to install Caldera. I don't want to defend Suse, but this is an
 sm> essential difference in practice. And the normal end user is not able to

But only if you look at the cost.  Free Software is not about costs but
about freedom and from this point of view there is no difference.

 sm> "make-money-with-free-software"-dogma again and again will lead to such
 sm> "combinations" of freedom and artificial scarcity, in order to make that
 sm> money the free-software guys promise. I don't want to discuss this

You are ignoring some facts:  Cygnus used to be the first Free
Software company and they indeed made money from writing and
supporting Free Software.  ACT is still a good example for a
profitbale company running entirley on Free Software.  There are other
compnaies in Europe which still work. 

Well, there a couple of companies out of business, but I doubt that
this has to do with their business model.  There are thousands of
dot-com companies founded at about the same time Free Software
business became main stream - and most of them are now bankrupt.

 sm> What will happen, if Suse switches to the Caldera model? They will if
 sm> Caldera succeeds.

Sure.  I had a couple of discussions with SuSE employees and there
main issue is that GNU is unfriendly to their proprietary extensions
("You need to change this in glibc, so that we can better run ORACLE").

Ciao,
 
  Werner

-- 
Werner Koch        Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
g10 Code GmbH      et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
Privacy Solutions                                        -- Augustinus