hi i'm just posting this just to discuss about the fact that linux is free which more than a few people seem to think as the point of using linux.

at the beggining i formatted my hard disk BY MISTAKE, and i blew up windows...so i looked for an os and i found debian. for a while i thought that windows is BETTER because it JUST works for lot of things and because i wasn't used to see the two toolbars like in gnome. i soon found out that it's only copyright problems for mp3s and dvds which didn't work, and that linux could just work too when you get just a few codecs and stuff, and i'm very happy with it.

the real question i asked myself after is that why do linux guys prefer donations than selling. now i use linux because i think it actually is better than windows. if linux was for sale, i think i would have bought it actually. i think those programmers deserve to be paid for their efforts and their 'creations'(or modifications). if we all got disappointed by what big software companies sell, i think it's because it is overpriced compared to what it is, rather than the fact that we actually pay(well, at least it was my case). i would actually be prepared to pay more for debian than vista, for example. waiting for discussions, good&bad points in what i said etc etc.....

ps. this is just a fast idea...no offense on the gnu gpl, i still think it's a very nice concept..

You could sell a linux distribution if you so desired. It is the source that is free as in speech. I have purchased boxed sets in the past for Mandrake Linux and SuSE. One problem is if a retailer stops selling it. Best Buy used to sell Linux distro's. The number of distro's dropped until the last offering which was SuSE Linux. I wonder if they stopped carrying SuSE Linux to get a better contract selling Windows? For some distro's like Red Hat Linux, RH sells their Enterprise Edition, but the consumer distro is now Fedora Core which is available on the net.

A boxed set can contain a separate disk containing propriety programs or drivers. I don't remember if it was Corel Linux or an early SuSE version that had a disk of the game Civilization by Loki Software. I still play that game. The Corel Linux distro had a Penquin toy!

You can often get a disk from a magazine. Also look in the book store. Mandrake Linux published a book with their distro disk when they released 10.2 (pre-Mandriva).

Another problem may be that new Linux Distro's come out every few months so producing and stocking one version that will be soon replaced with a newer version may not make economic sense.

You can go to any number of linux / FOSS sites and click the [Donate] button. If you feel you got value, and want to return the favor, that is one way.

Another is to answer questions here as you develop more knowledge. One of the things that's tough for linux users is "support". Taking some of the pressure off developers by answering question lets then get on with doing their thing.

The thing about a lot of developers is they love what they do, so they are happy producing cool or technically challenging stuff. None of them will turn down a few dollars. And any time you can show someone the benefits of what they do with a bit of advocacy - the better for everyone.

So you prefer to ask rather than understand yourself.

You could check out the GNU website and ask yourself why Linus Torvalds decided to release his operating system kernel under such a license and why hundreds of people have contributed to it and created software that runs on the Linux kernel with the same license.

Why do you think that is Bongo?

Is it because all people are not like this?

Keep in mind many Linux developers DO get paid to do their development by companies such as Novell, Sun, Redhat, IBM, HP, OSDL, Google, etc.. These companies can benefit from Linux so they pay some of the high profile developers to keep them working on Linux or their various projects. Not all developers are so lucky though.

sorry if you didn't like that i ask it, but the other replies actually do help me a lot understanding

In a way donating is giving back something to the developers so its a good thing. I think some developers prefer donations because they don't actually sell boxed sets or support services, but need to pay for bandwith and other overheads. I sometimes buy boxed sets and donate to various projects, so that I support the developers financially whenever I can. Things like bug fixing, reporting bugs and helping with documentation, artwork, forums etc are also ways in which you can help developers and other users.

I'm having trouble seeing what the basic question is. If it is: "Why is Linux free?", then that misses the point.

Linux is part of a major paradigm shift in how SW is developed. The business model for an individual or company is only part of the picture--within the OpenSource movement, we still have a mix of traditional and new business models.

What's often confusing for newcomers is that "Linux" is not a unified project or organization, and no-one is in charge. Even Linus Torvalds' reign over the kernel can be bypassed at will.

The paradigm shift will keep evolving and proprietary SW will not go away anytime soon. What one hopes that WILL happen is that a new US administration puts the brakes on some of our more egregious monopolies. Consider this possibility in combination with the emergence of the under-$200 Linux econo-boxes. (Latest is Shuttle?)

EXACTLY! From what I've been seeing in the biotech area, the forces that are driving software acquisitions are changing in ways that FOSS is very able to exploit, and traditional commercial vendors are going to have difficulty handling.

- More and more companies are recognizing vendor lock-in for the gargantuan money pit that it is. They are actively looking for ways to avoid it, and generally that means FOSS since with most FOSS business models, they would be buying the service more than the software.

-Document readability/portability is a huge issue and getting larger and larger. The FDA mandates that pharmaceutical companies hang onto documents around a drug filing for 20 years. Care to have a guess as to how many 20 year old files can be read by current software? You'll probably only need one had. Heck, I wrote my thesis 15 years ago on Word for DOS. I still have the files, but Word certainly can't read them. Here is where open standards like ODF are going to be huge. I don't think OOXML is going to make it, largely because it relies so heavily on past formats that are closed. When somebody like the FDA comes knocking, an excuse that is the electronic equivalent of "the dog ate my homework" really isn't going to cut it.

- DRM is evil, and while corporations are still split on how to handle it, the downsides of having uncontrolled DRM in the workplace is substantial. About a year ago, I watched a Microsoft rep get shredded up one side and down the other by a bunch of pharma IT guys over the DRM built into MS Office. You could tell from the questions that they were terrified that critical documents would get locked down in ways that nobody could open. Yeah, the marketing departments and the C-suite love DRM because it lets them keep a tighter control over sensitive information, but most of that thinking is short term and will be a real detriment when there are legal and regulatory issues. Smart execs are recognizing this.

Basically, the whole no-cost argument is missing the point. A lot of powerful market forces are starting to recognize that there are much better ways to do things, and the dollars spent for the software are a small part of the total expenditures. Costs come in a variety of disguises, not just money.