It's just a cheap corporate trick to create a hype and attract public attention to Red Hat. Nothing more. Here are two possible variants: Variant 1: M$ refuses this counter offer. They are not so stupid to shoot themselves in the foot. Possible public reactions: 1. Bad. bad MS they don't want to help disadvantaged kids in poor schools. 2. Silence - (Everebody understand that M$ is not going to kill themselves) 3. Poor RH guys, they want, but they don't have any ability to help poor kids. Possible outcomes for M$: Nothing particular, everybody knows who they are. Possible outcomes for RH: Red Hat PR is going slightly up with possible increases in sales. At least they are not loosing anything. Variant 2: M$ accepts this counter offer. They are in fact stupid. Possible public reactions: 1. Hurray, M$ are loving and helping disadvantaged kids in poor schools. 2. M$ is no monopoly no more. There are no further law suits. 3. Good RH guys are helping poor kids together with M$. 4. OS war is over! Peace between Open Source and M$. Possible outcomes for M$: Gradualy going down the drain. Loosing new and potential M$ users and market share. Possible outcomes for RH: Gaining new RH users right from the class rooms. Red Hat PR is going straight up. Increases in sales and rapid increases in market share outpacing other Linux distros. Hail to the new RH monopoly! Why should we even pay any attention to these games of the corporate guys? Alex On Tuesday 20 November 2001 09:24 pm, tom poe wrote:
WOW!! MARVELOUS!!! BEAUTIFUL!!! Everything I've said about RH, I take back. This beats the Walmart FREE PARKING FOR RV's PROGRAM!
Seriously, imagine 1,000,000 computers for public schools! Tom
On Tuesday 20 November 2001 20:06, Lee O'Malley wrote:
Things may be shaping up better than we expected from the initial settlement, if someone has a brain in the government!
Tim Butler passed this on today to another list, but I thought others may have not see it. News & site follows:
"Red Hat, Inc. today proposed an alternative to the settlement announced today of the class-action lawsuit against Microsoft. Red Hat offered to provide open-source software to every school district in the United States free of charge, encouraging Microsoft to redirect the money it would have spent on software into purchasing more hardware for the 14,000 poorest school districts. Under the Red Hat proposal, by removing Microsoft's higher-priced software from the settlement equation, Microsoft could provide the school districts with many more computers -- greatly extending the benefits Microsoft seeks to provide school districts with their proposed settlement."
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2419968593.html
Hang on folks, if RedHat succeds with this, Linux will make a giant step forward! If this proposal is accepted, Microsoft would end up buying 1 million PC's for poor schools with RedHat donating unlimited upgrades of RedHat Linux to use on them. The other major distributions (SuSE & Mandrake) would do well to follow Redhat's lead on this one! Now let's see if Billy boy really is concerned about the children's technological needs!
-- MS Windows users should be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act! --------------> Try Linux and you'll understand why <--------------