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Ransom Love to Focus on UnitedLinux
morhoj writes "Looks like Ransom Love, who recently was host to a /. interview, has been replaced as CEO of Caldera and is now exclusively leading the UnitedLinux initiative. Some other stock buybacks and board swaps also happened at Caldera. Can't say that I'm all too pleased by this, I for one didn't like some of his answers in the interview, specifically that fees would be required to become "UnitedLinux" certified. That should really help wider Linux adoption."
Well, by charging, corporate america will be able to think with it. Besides it might become able to fund the partners to continue creating distributions we've grown so fond of.
It seems few here have any experience with keeping a company afloat. It's always complain, complain when these guys try to get paid for all the work they put into this. It would be one thing if they were making money head over heals like MS.
They have all been running at a loss with their linux distributions. Do you want to pay for them to continue?
I for one am willing to pay for what I get. Fair exchange, don't you think?!
So unless you can put up the money, and time it takes, and make it go right to bring out a great distribution, shut up!
Personally, I don't mind that United Linux is trying to make a profit. I also wouldn't mind paying for it, if it was worth it.
Having something be commercial is *not* the same as being closed (propriatary). If they try to charge money for something that sucks, no one will pay for it.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, and I'm a huge open source fan. But, people do still need to make money. And, I would rather see closed source software on an open platform, than closed source on a closed platform.
Just my $.02 worth, anyway.
As I see a few bits & pieces of the UL puzzle, I can't help but think of OSF. The Unix community was supposed to be united at last, as the software giants combined forces to create the one, truly standard OS. Focused more on fees than creativity... we all know how the story ends.
The more I read about UL, the less I like it. I seriously doubt that the people who developed most of Linux were expecting to be used as free labor in a conventional retail software product.
Ransom Love will destroy any hope UnitedLinux had. I hope he does not take SUSE down with him. He has never from day one understood anything about how to run an open source related company. Just look how popular Calera is with "Open"Linux (quotes are intentional.) They have boughten SCO, which is a horrible OS with a mainframe like following, and is slowly destroying that too. They had some cool technology years ago, like Linux NDS which was never widly used because nobody wanted to "tie themselves" to Caldera. He seems intent on creating vendor lockin, which is exactly what his market wants so badly to avoid.
Love seems to shoot himself in the foot each time he opens his mouth. People are complaining about the slashdot interview. That was one of the best interview he ever gave...go search for more, you'll see. This guy does not belong in the Linux business, he just doesn't understand it. What's even worse is he thinks he does.
This move of his saddens me. It also makes me want to go out and purchase some RedHat stock. All of RedHat's serious competition is about to die. I hope SUSE can maintain itself, and not sellout to Love's screwball mindset. I thought they knew better.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Yup. UnitedLinux just got the kiss of death. While UL was Ransom's baby all along, his role at Caldera kinda gave off a thin impression that he would just be another figure head in the total UL organization. Now that veil has been lifted and he's the head guy at UL, I expect him to apply his usual ideas of using the proprietary software model for open source software and drive UL into a tiny niche market. Poor Ransom, he just doesn't get it, does he? I've never seen one man make the same business mistakes so many times...
The way I see it, the certification fee is more a method of appealing to big businesses than an attempt to pocket some cash. Corporations can use any distribution of Linux they want, but most still don't use Linux at all. They want to know that the product they're getting meets certain standards. Although being certified doesn't imply any sort of superiority or higher quality than non-certified distributions, it does help.
It remains to be seen whether UL will be a good thing or not. But I thought the whole point of Open Source was to allow you more freedom (as in speech) over the code you run. Since when is charging money going against this ideal? Even RMS says it's ok to charge for Free Software.
Say UL is successful and lots of businesses adopt it. They still won't have the kind of control over the users that Microsoft does - because they can always take the source and go elsewhere if they don't like the direction UL is going.
Certification is about giving businesses the comfort factor that applications will work out of the box on their linux systems. Certification means testing - which means time and manpower - which costs money. Charging for it seems to make sense to me. And you're only getting charged if you want to be part of the UL distro club (as far as I can see anyway).
If he thinks "marketing" his own product is enough giving back to the open source community, he deserves to fail.
While I have read the GPL, and understand the FSF 'philosophy' I also believe it is somewhat like the bible. Full of good intentions, but unable to put across the full picture.
While I agree that 'just marketing' is not putting back into the free software community in the spirit of the GPL that marketing may attract thousands, or even millions (if done well) of new Linux users.
Each one of those Linux users will become a part of the community, and maybe one in a hundred or so will become an active and contributing hacker on some project - bringing much more mindshare to the Linux meme.
*This* is incredibly important as the proprietary software vendors seek more and more to shut open source software completeley out of the marketplace using laws and other unfair methods - I know that Ransom Loves main reason for conducting marketing was to make a profit, but please do not underestimate how important it is to gain mindshare in the current climate, and only effective marketing can do that with any degree of success. Without it, Linux will die a death within a very few years because the current user base is too politically apathetic and too small to prevent legal and commercial pressures from halting Open Source production and distribution.