Slashdot Mirror
Ximian Adds Subscription
Nat Friedman of Ximian points out that the introduction of the subscription service doesn't mean a reduction in the availability of free downloads, from Ximian and the 40 associated mirror sites. "We've actually grown the pipe by 500% over the past 4 to 6 months," he says. "We also have a mirror coordinator." He cites ever-increasing numbers of Red Carpet sessions as the reason for introducing a subscription; November alone saw three quarters of a million sessions.
That number seems likely to increase, in part because of Ximian partnerships with companies like HP, now shipping a preview release of Ximian Gnome on HP-UX, but also because the Red Carpet software update system no longer requires Ximan Gnome; Friedman passed along this link to distribution-specific static binaries which work with other distributions as well.
Despite new servers and more bandwidth, Friedman asserts that some users downloading software for free will inevitably hit servers at times "when they're getting 8k downloads and they'd rather be getting 50k, and that's really who the subscription is for."
$9.95 a month is too expensive. Hell, I can buy hosting for $9.95 a month! I wouldn't mind supporting them and getting the benefit of higher bandwidth, but a fair market price as far as I'm concerned would be about $9.95 a quarter.
apt-get wins it over for me. Everything else is just eye-candy. And now expensive eye-candy.
It's nice that even in this increasingly commercialised Open Source world, that there's still a few idealists left.
Even if you buy every release of Red Hat Linux, it won't cost you $120 per year. And that's an entire operating system (with GNOME included!), not just a pretty GUI.
Remember, folks, it's still legal to mirror this stuff. It's all GPL.
--Patrick, who will continue paying $0 per year for software
I mean, when a company offers software for free like they do, the least you can do is pay them back for their effort.....but no......., the freebie, linux-loving, utopian-masked, logic-blinded hippies want everything for free...
Uh, Uh.
I like Transgaming's product, winex, but I do have a problem with the subscription service. You would expect to be able to download a new version every month if you are paying a monthly fee. But you don't get that at all. They have only had one update since I signed on in October, and paid for three months. Ximian better have an update per month(at least) or it would not be worth it at all.
Linux needs an automatic updater like Red Carpet. Why? First, because of WindowsUpdate. It's quick, easy, and on the mark when updating the OS and MS's addons. You've bought the OS, sure, but the updates are free. At $9.95/month, now you have a free OS that ends up costing you the same as the full version of XP Home after just over a year and a half.
Second, because updating Linux without a tool like that is just impossible for the average user. People here often complain about the inaccessibility of MS updates to bug fixes and security holes, but at least they're in one place, on one site (even if you have to dig to see them), and usually end up on WindowsUpdate. How to the Linux Elite expect an average user to keep up with every possible package, dependency, bug fix, security hole and update? Linux's greatest strength, openness and diversity, is also it's greatest weakness. There is no central repository to keep your system running smoothly...except tools like Red Carpet.
What about for corporate situations? I'm telling you, Debian scares me, but a local apt-get cache for my users is looking more and more attractive every day.
Is this the new trend for Linux? "Yes, our OS is free (as in beer *and* speech!), but in the long run, it'll cost you more than Windows if you want to actually keep it updated." I dunno...that doesn't sound appealing to me, and it doesn't sound like it fits within the creedo that has been trumpeted for the last 10 years.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
How can consumers be sure they're not just throttling what they used to give away for free and that what they're charging is fair?
This one is pretty easy. They probably are just throttling their old bandwidth, but since they paid for it, that's their perogative.
I assume you would determine if 'what they are charging is fair' the same way you determine it when you buy apples or SDRAM or a house. "Are you willing to pay X amount for Y benefit?" If YES, then the price is fair. If enough people decide NO, then Ximian changes prices or business models or what have you.
I don't see the value in providing bandwidth except to larger corporations who do massive amounts of updates but again, how far as Linux and Ximian penetrated corporations as a desktop?
It's quite simple, then. If you don't see the value... don't buy it. It doesn't matter a whit for YOUR purchasing decision what others think or do. The market forest is determined by each little tree like you.
This is basic economics, not quantum mechanics.
If MS was to institute this sort of plan ...
Are you kidding? Slashdot would flame the holy living hell out of them! The kneejerk reaction of the non-MS crowd would be that "Micro-shaft" is trying to stick it to the consumer.
Let's get real here.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Your entire argument seems to rest on the fact that you believe bandwidth is free.
:) You may not pay by the byte, but Ximian does, as does almost every other company and individual running a server.
BANDWIDTH IS EXPENSIVE.
Okay? Hope that clears everything up
By allowing people to download stuff for free(although relatively slowly), they're still basically giving you money from their pockets.
So please, until you start providing servers with a 100Mbit connection to a good backbone, and provide all the bandwidth fees(thousands of dollars per month), then please don't bitch.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
$10/month for Ximian.
Hmm.
That's absurd. Imagine paying $10/month for each of GNOME, the kernel, your office suite, etc etc.
As another poster mentioned, that's $10 ($30, $40..) more than MS is asking for per month for automatic updates.
I'd actually think about paying $10/month for fast auto updates for the entirety of my distribution...it'd be nice to go to *one* site, make three clicks, wait for the download, and have my entire system up to date with the latest patches. Even better if it were done automatically.
But paying $10/month for one [albeit large] component of my system just invites others to charge for other components.
So much for avoiding the MS license if that happens, right?
I think you've hit on a key point here. The $9.95/month seems to attempt to cover bandwidth costs paid by Ximian.
Perhaps some sort of distributed mirroring system needs to be implemented for smaller companies that don't have $billions$ coming in every year to spend on bandwidth.
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Yes, for a company RCE sure is dirt cheap. But as a home user, my RCE subscription would be about 1/3 of my entire internet bill, and that's a bit steep, IMO.
Jason.
I don't have a problem with Microsoft making money, what I do have a problem with is when this takes a higher priority than the software itself. I don't see this here.
Yes, I don't like Microsoft.
I don't know if you missed my point but it was about having something "Value Added". Like so many other threads point out, that's 120 dollars a year more than Microsoft.
"By allowing people to download stuff for free(although relatively slowly), they're still basically giving you money from their pockets.
And so is every GPL developer on the planet. Giving your time/bandwidth/food whatever to people for free is something that's not new but offer something if you're going to charge 9.95 for "more bandwidth".
Also most businesses on the Internet understand that bandwidth costs money but it's an expense that they have to pay for. They get the convienence of letting people download their software instead of having to run an operation that presses cds, handles ordering and a warehouse to ship people cds.
So please, until you start understanding economics and charging 120 dollars a year for no value added except a faster download, don't bitch.
Ximian is not penetrating the market that will pay for that type of service, especially to make it a sustainable business model.
Added to which, whats to stop aggresive mirroring from getting software out to free sites within hours of it being available to Ximian subscribers??? I just don't see the benefit.
How can consumers be sure they're not just throttling what they used to give away for free and that what they're charging is fair?
What does it matter? They could charge $50 a month if they wanted. The question is quite simply: Do you feel it is worth it? If not, then don't pay it. If so, then pay it. Then Ximian will make marketing decisions based on the number of people that subscribe.
That's how capitalism works. You get to decide pricing indirectly, not directly!
"And like that
I am sick and damned tired of people bitching about modest fees from previously free open-source sites. I mean, really. ESPECIALLY when they still offer a free alternative.
We're all smart people. If there's one thing we should have learned about the dot-bomb era, it's that organizations (businesses, companies, hacker efforts, the red cross...) NEED MONEY TO STAY ALIVE. That's just how it is, people.
We have lots of control over organizations, simply by choosing who to support with our $. (Guess what? Ximian might be a good opportunity to further the cause.)
All of you people that are out there bitching about paying some small fee for good access, what don't you get about this? What is so hard to understand about needing $$$ to support the effort?
Money is a basic requirement for effectively bringing anything to the masses, be it charity, goodwill, and even open-source software.
Everyone bitching on here, take a step back and look at the big picture. You need to do your part. FYI, your part is NOT bitching about what amounts to a sustenance model for something you care about.
If you love and care about important stuff like this, suck it up, and spring for the 33 fucking cents/day it might cost you.
I, for one, have already signed up to pay the paltry $9.95/month to support something that I care about and love, which I don't want to go away.
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
No. What I want is one. Count them. One server getting those downloads and being able to push out the updates to my clients. That way I pay for one download but all my machines get patched.
For large deployments, what I really need is the ability to automagically mirror a Ximian server. And the second I can do that I only need one subscription. Red Carpet, at least for how I've got it configured, is useful at the consumer level and at that level $120/year is pricey for what you are getting. Call me a cheap bastard but I can't consider this service until it costs about a third of what they are currently charging.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Can't fault a company for trying to make some money
Unless, of course, that company is trying to stop casual copying of its operating system or office suite.
Seriously, what is with this? Whenever people talk about Evolution or Red Carpet I get this feeling that I have some secret that nobody else knows about. I know debian is harder to get installed than other distros but *come on*.... it is a one time cost. You would think it was next to impossible the way people avoid it.
Every couple of weeks I pop open KPackage and use the debian servers to and shop around for upgrades. If I ever find myself needing software I don't have... I go to KPackage.
I don't understand. Why does Ximian need to charge money for bandwidth and Debian not? Are their operating costs a lot higher? I think it must be because Debian is not-for-profit so people must feel more responsability to make donations. I just don't feel philanthropy towards a for-profit business.
Just some thoughts.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Mandrake Update works fine (as of version 8.1) and automatically updates you with security and bug fixes whether you paid for Mandrake's product or just downloaded it from a mirror.
I have a feeling that Ximian is on the way out the door...
There is no double standard here. Ximian gives away all of its software for free. MS doesn't. With Ximian you can pay for a faster download.
But you knew that and were trolling right?
What's worse, these ONLY support RPMs. There's nothing for SLP's, DEB's, perl modules, etc. Further, they generally only support one architecture (i386). Binaries for the 486, 586, 686, Athlon, etc, just don't seem to exist on these servers.
What is needed, IMHO, is a caching gateway for developers. A developer simply registers a directory, and forgets about it. (File-And-Forget). Every N hours, the gateway scans all registered directories, updates a database of who has the most recent version of what, and drops from its cache any out-of-date versions.
On receiving a request, the gateway would check it's cache for a copy. If it has one, it send the file. If it doesn't, it locates what server does have a copy, grabs it, caches it, then forwards it.
Dependency checking would be simplified, because this kind of server would have a record of damn near every RPM, DEB, SLP, perl module, etc, out there. If the dependency couldn't be met directly, it can always use something like Alien to covert a different package format to the one needed to meet the dependency.
Such a system would also be much cheaper to run, as you don't need a gigantic machine. Remember, you're not storing all the binaries on the computer, only the ones likely to be needed. You also don't need to administrate such a machine, to keep it up-to-date, as it updates itself, with the help of the developers themselves.
All you'd need is a decent network connection. Geant would do nicely. Failing that, someone could practically run something like this out of their home, especially if you allowed a peer-to-peer arrangement of gateways, so that no one connection is saturated.
IMHO, this would utterly negate the need for any kind of commercial update tool, and provide a universal updating system for most Linux platforms.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
$9.95 is pretty steep. Unfortunately, that seems to be the magical number on the Internet. The maximum minimum people are willing to pay per month.
Also, why is it ok if companies like Ximian try to make money, but when others (like MS, for example) try, then they are evil, dastardly corporations?
...I still see KDE pumping out releases whereas it still looks to me like the Gnome folks are refining their developing bureaucratic institution. I'm ambivalent on it, myself, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the Slashdot crowd would be annoyed.
Compare Ximian's story list with KDE's. Ximian's is all marketing smoke and mirrors (oh yeah, and release updates on a FILE BROWSER and TIME SCHEDULER (woo-hoo!)), whereas KDE can't stop churning out stuff.
Basically, if KDE were to throw this $9.95 service fee out there, I don't think people would complain as much, because they know what they're getting in return. Me, I haven't changed my GNOME in over a year (even though it's my primary X environment) because I haven't been impressed enough with all the wonderful things I'm supposed to upgrade to.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
The problem is that cable companies essentially have to intrude on your network and figure out what you're running in order to offer their service. Ximian's service is a natural and reasonable one to offer. There is no 'customer policing' to make sure it works.
Also, I have no problem with the cable companies differentiating based on usage, but that should be based on usage, not what software you happen to be running. If they want to rate limit you and charge you extra to have it lifted, that's great. What I have a problem with is them telling you what you can and can't have on your network.
Essentially cable companies are trying to 'police' users for business mistakes they made. They shouldn't have assumed that all users would be docile downloading consumers, and structured their business and pricing plans accordingly. Instead, they want to blame consumers for their glaring error in offering unlimited bandwidth to home users isn't quite so apparent.
In short, the situations are not comparable.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
service for over a year now. It saves me time and
keeps my software (including OS) up to date.
Although the main reason I paid is not for faster downloads, I paid because I want them to keep up the good work. Continue to develop useful software and release it as GPL. The faster downloads is just a bonus.
I don't really see how Ximian is going to make it. At the end of the day they are really just another Eazel - a company with a neat product that you can obtain for free. There simply is not a compelling reason to give Ximian money.
The best advice I could give them at this point is to develop some truly useful and unique linux apps and sell them. People will pay for something they cannot get elsewhere if it truly enhances the utility of their system.
For example, I would pay for a Real JukeBox type system that united all of the functions of the various linux music programs in one nice package.
I'd be more than happy to pay for Ximian but I have a couple of big qualms so far. First, it obliterates the main menus in Mandrake and Redhat and replaces them with Ximian menus. wtf? Why not just add a Ximian section to the existing menus and leave people's configurations alone? Also, Ximian Gnome doesn't seem to integrate very well into Mandrake. It took a long long time to get Ximian for Mandrake 8 out and it Red Carpet still breaks things somewhat often that it doesn't break on Redhat.
I don't use or pay for Windows because it doesn't work. I use Linux because it works. I'm more than happy to pay for software or services that work but until these types of problems are resolved I think I'll stay with the old non-pay mirror system and live with the slower speeds.
I am maintaining free software package with several dependencies (most from RedHat and Ximian GNOME distributions). Many users complain about not being able to install it. Publishing it as channel as Ximian would be perfect. Unfortunately Ximian does not allow 3rd parties to create and maintain software channels using thier technology.
Now then they started to charge money it is just matter of time until somebody will write free open source service analogous to Ximain which will allow developers to publish their own channels via WWW interface. Bandwidth would be moderate, because such server only needs to distribute XML files with pointers to packages on other sites.
Seriously, we would love to see our users predominantly using our free mirror sites.
So why not add a little code to Red Carpet that automatically chooses a nearby mirror? I wasn't using the mirrors because until today I had never looked at the RC prefs.