On Sunday 02 April 2006 5:38 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sun, 2006-04-02 at 16:14 -0500, Greg Wallace wrote:
Though the packaging is also valuable, right? SuSE, Red Hat, etc. tie everything together in their distro. There's value in that above and beyond the value of the individual open source components therein, right? All the work that under paid guys did, as well as all the testing.. making certain the installer worked.. that is worth money.
I think the topic of discussion was between buying the software as opposed to downloading the rpms/ISO images for free. Then the main value add is the support you get when you buy it
And it used to be in the books, not the last package but prior ones included what amounted to text books that lead new folks ( myself included) into the linux world by the hand if need be. I didn't always read every word in them, but I always felt that if I needed some information in the dead of night I would find it in those books. And I was ( and still am ) willing to pay a good portion of the total price of each packaged set was in creating and writing and printing those books. I know there is this anti "dead tree: brigade about somewhere.. but the idea that you can just read it on your computer is no consolation when you can't get past a screen you have never seen before which wants you to enter....... what? Something? Anything ?????? IF you can not boot the machine the books on the hard drive do you less good than a good stiff drink ! -- j On the night wind that takes me just where I want That's all I want. La Vie Dansante