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Xref: sserve comp.unix.aix:48631 comp.unix.bsd:15523 comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:7691 comp.unix.solaris:28087 comp.unix.unixware:15006 Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.unixware Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!palowoda From: palowoda@netcom.com (Bob Palowoda) Subject: Re: Unix for PC Message-ID: <palowodaD0HJqw.1Do@netcom.com> Followup-To: comp.unix.aix,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.unixware Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1] References: <199411210319.TAA18133@nic.cerf.net> <D0CDv6.8v@novell.co.uk> <3c1q8k$97k@explorer.clark.net> <D0G42C.DCE@novell.co.uk> <D0G9vE.o8@fulcrum.co.uk> Distribution: inet Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 09:30:32 GMT Lines: 57 Ian G Batten (igb@fulcrum.co.uk) wrote: : Is it just me, or is there something rather odd about an employee of a : company that ships a for-money Unix for Intel railing against the : development process of a for-free one? : If Novell's stuff is worth the money, people will buy it. If it's not, : they won't. To take an example we've got a longer history of, decent : free compilers like gcc didn't kill off for-money compilers: they just : raised the game. To make money out of a C compiler you need it to be : better in some way than gcc: that may be difficult, but that's tough. : ian I think there is a couple of ways at looking at it. First lets see Linux from "Just Computers" cost at minimum 57.95. The Linux Professional package cost 229.95 (Slackware) and a bunch of books. Of coarse you can get it free but than what do say about the people buying the CDROM's. The most ironic view is it makes a laughing stock of the GNU License which it so proudly promotes. I'm sure later on that distributors of the CD's will add proprieetary install programs and other programs to commercialize the distribution. No big deal no body is going to sue them, nobody can. So I guess you could say Linux has two faces one free available from source on the net and the other value added. Should one expect the development efforts of the free one to meet some sort of expectations of the "not free one"? And ultimately where does the support for the "not free one" originate from? Second, alot of the Linux community seems to want commercial applications ported to it. Or at least run on Linux. WP from Novell comes to mind. If anything I don't see why employee's of Novell would not want to express opinions on the support and quality of development efforts of Linux. If WP core dumps because of a bug in Linux (the free or commercial version) the enduser cannot easily determine the fault. What's even worse is the finger pointing and the "well it's free" anyways answer. Should Novell and WP be concerned? I actually think Linux is a decent OS (needs improvement on some of the network features). But it's still not clear to "me" the way it is supported in the commercial versions. I have noticed Linux users are sensitive about this issue. Hopefully in the future the Linux community will make more efforts in how they are going to support the "free and commercial" versions. Off the subject, does anyone have a hardware list of supported devices for Linux? ---Bob -- +--------------------------------------------------------+ | palowoda@fiver.sns.com http://fiver.sns.com/~palowoda/ | | Solaris x86 Corner http://fiver.sns.com/ | +--------------------------------------------------------+