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

Forget about it if you use KDE

[L-Wave]

I could see paying for the service if it supported updating KDE as well....but usually installing the gnome ximian packages does some things I dont like to KDE:

1) KDE's menu loses various programs like gimp, gphoto, etc.... (because the RPMS are now labeled *-ximian.*

2) It breaks KDE-pim rpm, basically you cant run KpilotDaemon anymore

3) I forget what else, but there are more.

anyways, thats just my 2 cents about the service.

Stuck with bugs?

[Marx_Mrvelous]

How will they deal with people who don't want to pay $8/month but still think critical bugs should be fixed? Hmm.

Too expensive, I agree

[truthsearch]

Paying per quarter or year makes much more sense. It's a strange feeling to pay for something monthly that you wouldn't use at least once a month (at least I hope they don't make one release per month). I could see 4 upgrades a year, so pay every quarter. But if I can dial up to the entire internet for $19.95/mo (granted 56K), why pay $9.95/mo just to upgrade a small portion of my software?

I agree with their strategy of charging, no problem there. In fact they should charge for their services. But they need to come up with a better pay model. Maybe charge more monthly for corporate upgrades, less for home users.

What's the big deal

[the_rev_matt]

I must be confused. A company is offering premium service (just like RHN does) for a reasonable fee and every gets their panties in a wad. They are not discontinuing the free updates (as the teaser implied they were), they are simply saying "if you pay us, you'll get priority access". Red Hat has been doing this for years with FTP access. A real world analogy would be this: For 32 cents (US) the US Postal Service will send your letter anywhere in the US. For another few dollars they will make someone sign for it, and for a few dollars more they'll get it there faster. Are you saying you'll boycott the USPS because they charge more for faster service?

As for myself, my time is actually worth something so I'm more than happy to spend 10 bucks a month on a useful service that gets my updates to me faster.

Possible better solution

[nemesisj]

This latest move is a noble attempt at trying to make some money, but I'd rather see companies like Redhat get an easy to use automatic software updater that keeps every package on my system up to date, and give me the "express treatment" when I enter a UPC code from the boxed version of the software I bought at a retail store. I think this would be a much better solution since it doesn't mean me paying every month, and Redhat is still making money off of retail sales, in addition to racking up more brick and mortar sales numbers.

Re:I hate to say it

[bonius_rex]

What does this do to RedHat's paying RHN customers? There is a RedHat channel in RedCarpet. If I were going to pay for a service like this (I'm not), I'd go with Ximian, which gets me my RedHat updates, PLUS all the content from Ximian, codeweavers, Loki, etc. etc.

Anyone think this might be bad news for RedHat?

Re:Not a chance.

[scenic]

Except that Red Carpet does everything you just asked for. I keep ALL my systems up to date via Red Carpet. I *don't* use RHN, and I don't have to hit any other sites for anything else.

RedHat updates? Available. Loki Demos? Available via Red Carpet. StarOffice (with all the configs set up so that Evolution can launch .doc and .ppt files directly into SO)? Available. Opera? Available. The list goes on.

My point is just that you're not just paying for priority access for GNOME updates. You're paying for priority access to whole system updates.

In a way, Ximian is making a meta-distribution, and Red Carpet is what facilitates that... it allows them to add channels that contain most of the major downloads you might be interested in. If you're not interested in a particular app (let's say you don't want to use StarOffice), just unsub that channel.

You should try running it... it's a lot different (better, IMHO) than RHN. That's why I've already signed up.

Sujal

Re:Ximian

[baptiste]

Guess 9.95 isn't so bad....

A month? For updates to Gnome and other products I need to purchase? I just can't see how $120/yr is a good value (ok $99.95 if I buy it a year at a time). Of course Redhat wants $240/yr per machine. Yes, I know bandwidth is expensive, etc, etc and Ximian needs to make money. I'm all for that. But the pricing seems a bit off. Hell - for $120 or $240 a year I can buy windows and still get updates to it (teh few there are ;) ) for free.

I'm not saying everything has to be free. But come on! For example - I've got 3 desktops (me and kids) and a laptop. All run Redhat. Do I have to buy subscriptions for each (I do with RedHat) That's $400/yr just to auto update my packages? I hate dependency problems as much as the next guy but that's nuts.

I agree with the poster - I'll be doing my upgrades overnight and send Ximian what I feel is fair value for the desktop and the service.

Re: Mirroring... Gnutella Network!

[abe ferlman]

The Gnutella network exists and would be an excellent haven for free content. So long as it is clear that you are expected to share whatever you download, this is basically free bandwidth for ximian, although it is still slow.

This also solves the legitimacy problem that peer-to-peer systems often have. If the files are legal to redistribute as all GPL'd code is, then pow! - we have a clear non-infringing use for a network like this. Sorry Jack Valenti, networks are for kids.

It's a win-win. What's really needed is a list of projects that need to be shared from people's idle gnutella collections, so that the sharing can happen with a modicum of intelligence- or perhaps even just an announcement on the download page asking users to pledge to share the files they download (or some portion of them) on peer to peer networks like the gnutella network in order to guarantee their widespread distribution, and a place to enter their email address so they can be notified when a newer version has been released so they can start sharing the newer one. You probably can't offer a discount for this or anything since

If bandwidth is their only problem, I think this is a solvable problem so long as the content they are distributing truly is free.

Please, someone with more time and experience, steal (or hire me to implement :) my idea and develop a free software distribution vehicle (apt-get? redcarpet? something new?) which is agnostic as to its transport mode but explicitly encourages the use of peer-to-peer networking for file transfers and only uses centralized servers for version listing updates. The legality of transferring files between users rather than from central distribution points is a huge advantage of free software- currently we're only capitalizing on it by downloading iso images or copying cdroms. We can do much much better.

Bryguy

Re:*Cough*apt*cough*

[WesHertlein]

I prefer Debian's -- apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade is pretty hard to beat. If you run the stable branch, you can pretty much put that in a cron job and forget it.

Be careful about saying something like this. Too many people will take it literally.

One should never run a software upgrade unattended like this (trimmed and taylored by an IT department is one thing, somebody's local server or desktop is quite another). I know, I know, you take proper precautions with what gets puts in a crontab. Even for something like this, you're probably better off with the snippet:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade --download

That way:

• The upgrade only runs on a successful update
• The packages get cached for easy install later, but nothing remotely volatile is going to be executed right now
• A nice reassuring note will appear in an e-mail box everyday. (Everybody does alias root mail to a local user, and then check it, right? ^_^ )

Personally, I go a little more crazy. I tend to do:

apt-get -qq update && apt-get -dqq upgrade && apt-get -sqq upgrade

(The shorthand is mostly for e-mail subject lines, so I get a reminder of what's going on.) In long terms, that's:
apt-get --quiet --quiet update && \
apt-get --download-only --quiet --quiet upgrade && \
apt-get --simulate --quiet --quiet upgrade
This way, I only get mail if something (like an install) needs to get done. I check my e-mail in the morning, and if something is pending, it gets taken care of.

This post is mostly a just-in-case post... someone might read the parent and think, "hey, that's a great idea!" (which they should ^_^). Hopefully they'll scroll a little bit before adjusting their crontab.