Ian Murdock On 'Pure' Vs. 'Commercial' Debian

Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian. The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would. Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "

Comments

Overwhelming majority?

[gattaca]

If I polled the CD buying community and asked how many would be prepared to buy the next Britney Spears Album and 32% said 'yes', I'd think she was doing pretty well. I think I might even buy stocks in her record company.

If 32% of people, used to getting something for free, say they are prepared to spend cash on a commercial variant, then doesn't that sounds like good news for the companies involved?

Whether that's good for Open Source, Unix etc.. is a different question, which, I think, might have been discussed sometime before on Slashdot. :-)

As someone who spends an unhealthy amount of time infront of my computer, anybody who can help make that experience more enjoyable for me is going to be my friend - I might even ask my company to pay them for it....