Time Warner to Charge Extra for Over-Quota Bandwidth

duckygator writes: "I just came across this article on NetworkWorld discussing Time Warner's announcement that they will begin charging users a fee for exceeding a monthly download limit. The actual limits and associated fees aren't discussed. Guess I knew this would be coming sooner or later ... Now I guess I'll just have to guess where the threshold will be. Anything more than email? Active gamer? Graphic artist?"

Comments

Death of free software.

[twitter]

It might actually be cheaper to go out and buy the CD than download the ISO from Red Hat. All of a sudden RH turns a sale with a cost to them into a sale with profit! That _has_ to be a good thing.

No, I don't see it that way. How am I to contribute to large software projects with these leaches charging me so much to check out? No development, no code, no Red Hat. While distros like Debian are streamlined as is, this will still add costs and trouble to the average user. Cheap people will disable their hits on security.debian.org, and we might just see some breakins on Linux computers. This is all very backward and eliminates the advantages free software has over crappy boxed "products": quick responses to venerabilities, configurabilty and ease of upgrades.

A curse on these asses who wish to return to the bad old days of boxed software, Ma Bell, and all other manner of greedy grabbing oppresion. Ludites all!

So many attacks on free software from so many directions. It is just so depressing. September 11th was bad but what people are making of it is worse.