This is ridiculous!!

[SunshineFolk]

OK, so I was browsing around the web, I know, I'm cool like that, and stumbled upon a site selling Linux Operating Systems. Either a CD, USB, or whatever else they have to offer. It kind of made me laugh at first, but then kinda made me mad.

I mean really, who does that!?!?! How do they sleep at night?!

Check it out here ---> SCANDALOUS

I understand that some people want it as simple as you can get it, but doesn't this defeat the whole "open source" meaning? And yeh the disc or USB, whatever you buy from them cost money, but COME ON!!

What are your alls opinions on this?

EDIT: After reading around there website, this is what I found, and suppose this is how they are doing it. Still don't see it as right tho.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things........

Man, guess they're taking advantage of the "and charge for this service if you wish."

[elija]

There is nothing wrong with that at all. It's Red Hat's entire business model. It's how Suse is sold by Novell and Canonical do the same with Ubuntu.

Understand that sometimes free software isn't free and sometimes free software isn't free. Sometimes it's both free and free and sometimes it's turns out to be neither free nor free!

[gruven]

Adding to what elija said, some households have metered internet and would have to pay a lot of money to download a lot of distros. Debian is like 8 DVDs for the whole install, and that is a lot of bandwidth.

It makes sense for some, because they are just charging you for the media and the time to burn it.

[SkittleLinux18]

Debian is like 8 DVDs for the whole install

And the like 40 CDs. A) How come that is the case. B) Is it possible to install the OS from just 1 CD/DVD?

[elija]

And the like 40 CDs. A) How come that is the case. B) Is it possible to install the OS from just 1 CD/DVD?

A) They have the entire repository on them
B) Yes.

And you can even download a net install CD which is tiny

[SkittleLinux18]

Awesome! Thanks for letting me know.

[MASONTX]

Also, there are some folks, like my wife, who manage to make a lot of coasters when they try to download and burn somehing. For those people it is simpler to pay someone to burn a good cd/DVD for them.

[madhatter632]

I know with RHEL your paying for a service contract (support and such) more then your paying for the os .

[jayd512]

That site has been up and running for quite a while, now.
Even Distrowatch has an ad up for them near the top of the page.

[hazel]

The point about charging for Linux is that you have to add some value to it to persuade people to pay for what they could get elsewhere for free. It could be convenience in installation (CDs through the post) or a support and training package (Red Hat) or additional cool software. If you do add value, you're entitled to charge for it; that's just fair play.

But if you charge more than the value you added (as judged by your users), you'll get a bad reputation and someone will probably put your Linux fork up on his own website and distribute it for free, just to punish you for being greedy. And he has a perfect legal right to do that because it's free software and you don't have the right to monopolise it.

It's funny how some people think Linux is a left-wing conspiracy. Actually it's the purest form of capitalism since Adam Smith.