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Which Desktop Distro Will Die First?
Over at NewsForge, Roblimo asks the musical question of which of the several recently released "desktop oriented" Linux distributions won't survive the coming year. It's nice to see user-centric distributions at all, but it really is a niche market for now. Apropos that,
psykocrime writes "The fine folks at UnitedLinux have issued a Press Release announcing UnitedLinux 1.0.
Should be interesting to see whether this sinks or swims, considering the general ambivalence (at best) or even outright hostility (at worst) that most of the talk about United Linux has met, from the Linux community.
Questions about GPL compliance, per-set licensing terms, etc... is this the future or Linux or just another albatross?" And J. J. Ramsey writes "BeyondUnreal reviews not only Xandros Desktop's installation, but also shows what this distro's $99 price tag actually gets you. Read more here. LinuxPlanet also has an in-depth review of its own."
1. Bad marketing plans redolent of dot-bombs.
2. Onerous licensing not in keeping with Linux's mission.
3. Just plain bad distros.
4. Unprofessional behavior.
The latter will kill a company that deals in Linux very quickly, I've found, since the Linux community is very aware of a company's behavior, far more so than most other communities. If company X with distro Y is seen as "in bed with the enemy," they're going to get shunned faster than a sweet potato that's been up Rush Limbaugh's butt for safekeeping during the winter.
Maybe this is why small companies like Slackware are still around: they cater to a specific need, they do it well, and they don't try to shoot themselves in the foot with pretentious We Need To Grow Our Business jargon/corporate newspeak.
Completely free distros do not disappear, but those that require pay-per-seat because they have proprietary components are at much greater risk of disappearing. If the company loses interest, the distro goes away, as distributing it without their permission is not legal.
This is one of the things that puts Lindows at risk.
They already did and lost so far, what more as a result the name Windows as a trademark for MS' OS might not be protected. Lindows might be doing us all a favor.
Help fight continental drift.
Where is the page to order and download a $5 version in order to pay their bandwidth and server upkeep costs? I don't see it. Where is the page to order just the CDs for $10/$15? I don't see it.
The GPL doesn't require them to provide it. They're perfectly fine under the GPL only selling it for $299.
What they can't do is stop you from giving away (or selling for $5) the copy you bought from them for $299. The GPL doesn't say anything about you having to give away your software, or about charging only what it costs to physically transfer the copy. It just says that you cannot then place any restrictions on further distribution of that GPLed software.
-Rob