I personally do not know any Debian developers off hand like you do, so I do not really know what they are thinking. What I do know, is that no matter what they case, they would never come out publicly and state anything of the sort implying any wrong doing or knowledge of open source hypocrisies unless they are comfortable in fully knowing unemployment will rule the rest of their career in programming.

Selling out has tremendous backlash.

I would recommend that you subscribe to the debian-dev mailing list to see how afraid everybody there is.

Now where did I say that they would be afraid?

I am basically saying, that with the current setup, CNR is apt-get with a polished interface, and very handy. Perhaps you may of missed that above in my other post. I am also saying that it is a handy little interface, but in all aspects if we are talking about Linux, we are talking about open source, which means that in a near future, that it could become available to other distros, or it couldnt, and become proprietary, which leads us back to the current subject of this thread.

It may not of even come up in their mailing list concerning any opinions generated towards this subject, but obviuosly displayed within this forum alone, there is enough people that feel concerned enough to post about it. This says to me, that not everybody is all that happy with the situation, as also displayed about SuSe not long ago about YAST and YOU.
Nobody was worried about it than, but I will be damned, it is now open source.

Mailing lists also generally are not as open to criticism as forums are, so maybe... just maybe, people are not saying a whole lot about the subject either, considering the mailing lists usually have quite a higher rate of subscribers that are generally within the development field, enthusiasts, employers and most importantly, potential investment partners.

WebX I am in total agreement with all your post so far. I am thankful that there are some that still adhere to the true linux spirit; open source. Its not about freeloding. Its about keeping technology advancing. There is little room for proprietary mumbo jumbo in linux. I'd like to see ALL of linux advance instead of just one or two. If Redhat or Debian, just had kept their accomplishments to themselves then Linux would not be what it is today. Perhaps, even Linspire would not exist.

I think one thing people seem to neglect to realize, is that with using linux not only do you get a great OS, but you become part of a community that isn't just trying further their particular OS, but the community as a whole. Because of this, I think I find myself shushing away projects like Linspire because in some areas they fail with regard to the subject at hand. They have accomplished some great things like CNR. (CNR has its problems, like WebX posted, but it is a great accomplishment) But how about all of Linux sharing in that, just like Linspire shared in apt-get or even the linux kernel. I do have other fundamental problems like the root thing, but perhaps that will change in time as well.

That is your personal perception of Linux. Myself I'm mostly interested in getting my job done and it matters little if a dist is free or costs me $50/year. Alot more important is that I can rely on it working without any need to tweak around everything.
I don't care for the religious mumbo-jumbo that surrounds parts of the Linux community.

If the developers did not want commercialization of their software they wouldn't have chosen GPL in the first place, and even less BSD.

When did anyone mention commecialization. I think you're having your own private conversations in your head. Who mentioned the GPL? Open source does not necessarily have to have something to do with the GPL or GNU. I don't have a problem with distros making a buck. Did you hear me say otherwise? I have bought SuSE 9.1 pro. I don't mind buying something that is open anywayz, because I want to support them for what they have done.

Again, putting words in my mouth. Or perhaps its another private conversation. Tell you what. Take a moment, gather your thoughts, tell the voices to go away, then come back and we'll talk.

No-one mentioned GPL, but most of the OSS software in Linspire is licensed under GPL.

"Putting word in YOUR mouth!?" - That was my personal opinion on Linux, hence the word "Myself" as the start of the sentence.

You implied that I was talking about commercialization and money. Which I did not. In fact you don't seem to want to stick to the the discussion.

I put my opinion here and it must not be in line with yours. It is not you who set the rules for what can be inputted in this discussion.

Linux could never have been what it is today without the GPL. It was the community spirit that caused so many programmers to develop it. And then there are the thousands of GPL applications. I don't want a commercial distribution. If I want to give back to the community I give Debian a donation. There are a lot of open source projects that need donations. Buying Red Hat or Suse doesn't necessarily help open source software get developed.

My 2 cents

That is true and I hope GPL prospers and continues to grow.

I don't think the point of buying a commercial dist should be to "support". You're supposed to buy the product if you have use of it - if it brings you value. That is why I buy Linspire. In addition to that I also have donated to a few projects, such as freenet and debian. Also Lindows, Inc. sponsors a few GPL projects, funds development of others (Nvu, Lphoto, Lsongs) and hosts a few community sites (kde-look.org, kde-apps.org).

I'm not saying no one should buy a commercial distro. That's everyone's choice. They should use what they need. *In my opinion* Debian does everything I need and more. I've tried the commercial side and haven't seen anything special.

From what I've read Linspire does fund some good open source projects and gives them away to whomever for free. That's good. If someone wants to buy a computer from Wal-Mart or somewhere for surfing, email, and chatting they should probably buy a Linspire one. But for the geeks like me, we just have different tastes ;-)

Peace,
darthtux

I do agree with a portion of your comments, however buying SuSe did help Novel come around to buy them out, and thus a release of Yast and YOU became a initial open source probability.
In the case of Redhat though, yes, there is many truths in your statement, because as it has been noted, Redhat has at least one solid year of technological advance over many Linux distros, which in turn means they are not sharing the fruits of their labor with the rest.

Without open source, you would of never seen PHP grow as it did, nor Apache, MYSQl...etc...and now look at them. These three packages alone send a shockwave down proprietary sources and prove the simplistic approach to community effort and talent without a massive pricetag.

And what do they have in particular that is technologically advanced?


Suse was trying to keep it all a secret. Novell opened up software programs which probably won't help any competition anyway. They are saying to potential customers buy our Linux. And also look at our other software products that run on linux. Linux to them is a marketing tool. But that's another discussion