Ximian Adds Subscription

GeneJock writes "Apparently the days of free fast updates from Ximian are gone. The latest update to the Ximian suite replaces the old Red Carpet Manager with a newer version which includes access to a subscription service. This subscription service costs $9.95 a month ($7.95 for the first two months if you signup now). You can still get the updates for free but its slow going... looks like I'll be getting my updates overnight. Read all about it here." Can't fault a company for trying to make some money - hope it works. Update: 12/19 16:48 GMT by T : Please note: Ximian isn't cutting back on the free downloads, either -- in fact, just the opposite. Read below for some more information about this, including a link (yup) to a standalone static binary of Red Carpet, so you don't even need to use Ximian Gnome.

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."

Comments

Too expensive

[alt.sex.fetish.jesus]

$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.

This changes a lot of things

[SpookComix]

I've been using Red Carpet Updater for a couple of months now, and aside from it's obvious bias toward Gnome (and how easy it is to replace parts of standard Gnome with Ximian's versions...complete with dancing monkey) and a few dependency issues (most recently during an attempted update of Galeon, no less) it's been a pretty good tool.

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

Re:Value added or just paying for bandwidth?

[dbarclay10]

Your entire argument seems to rest on the fact that you believe bandwidth is free.

BANDWIDTH IS EXPENSIVE.

Okay? Hope that clears everything up :) You may not pay by the byte, but Ximian does, as does almost every other company and individual running a server.

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.

The "New" Business Model

[DragonWyatt]

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.