Sun Says Hardware Will Be Free

ron_ivi writes "Reuters reports that Sun's President and COO thinks hardware will be free and that people will pay for software subscriptions instead. Reuters quotes Schwartz: 'In our world, you will subscribe to the software and the hardware is free.' 'Directionally, our expectation is that in fiscal 2005 you're going to see a rapid departure from selling hardware, software and services apart.' 'Bill Gates and I agree that within four to five years hardware will be free.' We've recently read here on /. how Gates thinks hardware will be free."

Comments

A return to appliances?

[tepples]

First off, notice the apparent lack of any mention of the free software community in the article. Also, remember the difference between gratis hardware (subsidized by publishers of proprietary software as part of the license fees) and Free hardware (the more general purpose, the more Free).

It appears that like video game console hardware subsidized by licensed game sales, the gratis hardware will probably be locked to the particular applications, turning them into the equivalent of appliances. As publishers of proprietary software shift their business model from running on customer-owned hardware to running on hardware rented from the publisher, does this coming "appliance era" spell the end of affordable general-purpose PC hardware for residential use?

Re:A return to appliances?

[rsmith-mac]

And more importantly, how will consumers of such a system be treated? Is it going to be like the console system you describe, or is it going to be something akin to the cell phone market, where you're locked in to multi-year contracts, and locked to specific vendors through the life of the product?

Re:A return to appliances?

[JudgeFurious]

I believe it does mean that very thing. "Free" is not going to be a good thing in this particular instance. Free is just going to be a euphamism for "trapped".

I want no part of this.

Re:A return to appliances?

[Short Circuit]

I'm personally reminded of those WebTV boxes of a while back.

IIRC, the software was never in sync with even the commonly used W3C standards. Even in the days when HTML 4.0 was new, WebTV was considered lackluster.

Re:A return to appliances?

[AKAImBatman]

Don't fret too much. By shunting the price of the hardware into the software, Sun is pulling a quick marketing trick to make you think that the hardware is becoming cheap. The reality is that you're still paying the same costs for the hardware and software combo, you're just "feeling good" about it.

Re:A return to appliances?

[ahfoo]

The very big problem with these theories is that they overlook the source of the hardware. They're operating on the illusion that it is possible to control the products coming predominantly out of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Mainland China. That belief is not well grounded and it is a huge oversight.
First of all, these nations of origin are themselves not even close to being a homogenous entity. It's not as though East Asia even has a single currency or is even moving in that direction. This is a fiercely independent part of the world that is wrapped up in political details that most westerners don't even care to know the details about. Taiwan and China are the best example, but the troubled relationship between Japan and the rest of Asia is no less prominent for people in the region. We could go on and on.
Even within Taiwan, it would be absurd to pretend that there is cohesion among the players in just the motherboard market. Give that reality, these specualtions are little more than wishful thinking on the part of washed up software companies.
Sure, hardware will be so cheap it will be as-if it were free. But it will be running free software as well. I'm sure of that.

Re:A return to appliances?

[Pherry]

I suspect the days of free hardware for consumers is more than a long way off. The target market for this kind of thing is going to be business. Think large admin farms. The locked in multi-year contracts will be lawyer - lawyer between [M$,SUN] and your company.

The tactical advantage of this is to once again convince the major buyers that all their problems are solved by a check with bill's name on it.

Re:A return to appliances?

[D-Cypell]

Exactly!

When you can contact Microsoft or Sun sales and tell them that you want to take advantage of their free hardware offer but would prefer to leave the 'paid for' software without having the salesperson either immediately hang up or laugh uncontrollably, THEN they can call it 'free'.

Until then its just the 2 for 1 pizza offer that, strangely, is twice the price of a single pizza in the place two doors down.

Re:A return to appliances?

[h4rm0ny]

Don't fret too much

But in order to make this 'marketing trick' viable, the software provider must ensure that it is not possible to replace their software with an alternative. To do this requires Trusted (as in supervised) Computing - a DRM'd BIOS that is out of the user's control for example.

Excuse me, I have to go and fret now...

Re:A return to appliances?

[tambo]

A return to appliances?

An excellent point, tepples. Yes, this does appear to be a sea change toward the Apple model - or, even worse, the Commodore 64 - where the hardware is locked to an OS. Even worse: it may be locked to a particular OS version or class of versions - e.g., Pentium IV for Win2k/WinXP. No better way to push a hardware upgrade than to make it compulsory!

I consider this the "consolization" of the PC.

Interestingly, this happens at a time when game consoles are becoming more diverse. The PS2 was the first console to be natively compatible with another console (the PS1.) More importantly, most software is released on multiple platforms (Soul Calibur II was simultaneously released for all three major platforms!)

But even more insidious than the OS lock-in is the software rental model. Goddamnit, if I pay $200 for Office 2000, I expect the right to use that shit whenever I want. I will not tolerate a $10-a-month utility plan on my software applications.

America faces this creeping threat of having an increasing share of its goods offered only on a rental plan. The concept of consumer ownership is eroding. So you'll pay less now... but much more in the long run. And at the end of your lifetime, you will still own nothing.

This is corporate greed combined with corporate laziness - yet another tactic to extract more value out of the market for providing the same basic services. Excellent for the Great White Males who are shareholders/CEOs; bad for the rest of us. America looks more like a caste system every day. The only check on it is the hope of government regulation to say, these things are "goods" and these things are "services"... but sadly, our current federal government is a shameful example of "regulatory capture." - David Stein

Re:A return to appliances?

[h4rm0ny]

Sure, hardware will be so cheap it will be as-if it were free. But it will be running free software as well. I'm sure of that.

It will be. I'll fight tooth and nail to make sure of that with everyone I know.

BUT, I don't think the solution is as simple as you make out. The fact that, as you point out, there is no monopoly in hardware manufacturering means that hardware will be available independantly of the software. This I agree with. I also agree that open source software will be much cheaper (because it is free). However, you may find that 'untainted' hardware costs rise because the hardware you get "free" with the proprietary software is subsidised by the software company.

Think of it like buying a locked in cell phone that costs very little. I'm not sure if this happens in the US. I'm based in the UK at present. These phones are cheap because the network provider (e.g. T-Mobile, Vodaphone, etc) knows that you will be locked into their service for evermore with that phone. Conversely, a non-subsidized phone will cost you much more.

With so many special offers, with the OS merging with the hardware in the mind of the purchaser, you are dependent on the foresight of the customer.

"Sure," the buyer will say, "I could buy a more expensive computer so I could put Linux on it, but I can get this nifty 10GHz machine for half the price."

It's not whether there is a monopoly amongst the hardware manufacturers that will stop this, but how much in bed the big hardware sellers such as Dell are with the big software manufacturers.

Ooops. Looks like Linux has to get as big a market share as possible before this takes off because the hill is about to get steeper.

Re:A return to appliances?

[kfg]

That's correct. It's not property. Therefore, for its use you will owe me an annuity in perpetuity or erase it from your memory.

If you can't convince me you have done so I'm prepared to do so physically, assuming that, in your case, such is possible.

KFG

Re:A return to appliances?

[Lumpy]

nahh. there will always be people hacking them to do things the manufacturer does NOT WANT to happen...

I.E. the X box... I have 2 of them and will never EVER buy games for them.. yet I will be buying a third soon.

I cant wait for more of this kind of hardware. super cheap + hackable.

Re:A return to appliances?

[king-manic]

does this coming "appliance era" spell the end of affordable general-purpose PC hardware for residential use?

No. Just the end to warez and code your own adventures. For the vast majority of people their vision for computer use would be more comforting. The human mind ussually isn't goot at more then 5 or 6 choices. When you have literally dozens of choices to be made, most people will not sign on no matte rhwo attractive you make all the choices. thus OSS and Free and in beer software won't be for consumers and never was. Right now, Windows XP pro costs more then the computer I install it on 60% of the time. Not a huge leap to make XP subscription and to giev away the computer.

Re:A return to appliances?

[Maestro4k]

• "Sure," the buyer will say, "I could buy a more expensive computer so I could put Linux on it, but I can get this nifty 10GHz machine for half the price."

  It's not whether there is a monopoly amongst the hardware manufacturers that will stop this, but how much in bed the big hardware sellers such as Dell are with the big software manufacturers.

It's going to take one rather huge shift in consumer thinking for this to come about. Consumers have been buying cell phones that are locked in to plans for years, with computers they're used to paying once and owning it (or putting it on a charge card, but in the mind of the consumer that's still paying once.) When companies start trying to charge people for the OS every month/year/etc. people will rebel. To them it'll be a charge for something they already paid for. Even if the hardware's "free", the costs each month are more likely to be considered by the consumer as payments on the hardware, not software. People are used to owning software, no matter what reality the companies try to use with the shrinkwrap licenses.

It's interesting to note that Sun has apparently forgotten history, this is just net computers all over again with a new marketing swing. Net computers failed miserably, companies didn't want to be locked-in to hardware from one vendor. Even if a company goes with MS software now, they can buy their hardware from multiple vendors, and replacement for faulty parts is generally pretty quick and easy. I doubt the replacement for a dead "free" computer will be anywhere near as quick, nor as easy. Since the software would be subsidizing the hardware, the software vendors would try to discourage hardware replacements. Also if the hardware's free, what do you do with parts theft? Maybe this isn't an issue in businesses, but computer labs on university campuses have a big problem with this. If you have to get your hardware from the software vendor with the software, do you just have to toss what's left of the computer parts were stolen from and buy a new software license? Boy won't that go over well!

And on that subject, that software's going to have to cost an awful lot a year to sustain the industry standard 3 year replacement policies. So much so that either software providers will somehow have to convince business to lengthen that cycle, or charge so much it'll cost about the same as buying computers in large lots from Dell or Gateway costs businesses today. And you can bet that Dell and Gateway aren't going to just gently lie down and let the software companies take their business.

I predict an utter, total flop. We'll be comparing this to MS Bob someday.

Re:A return to appliances?

[Lussarn]

Sun invents standards such as NFS you know, and then share the speces with the rest of the world. Apple invents obscure quicktime formats and sues anyone who tries to use their DRM.

Sun have given openoffice to the community, Apple gives a kernel nobody gives a shit about.

Yeah. Apple is the pro opensource/pro standards of the two companies. It sounds more to me like a freerider on the open source wave.

Re:A return to appliances?

[John Miles]

And at the end of your lifetime, you will still own nothing.

Which is not necessarily a deal-breaker, seeing as how I'll be dead and all.

Re:A return to appliances?

[drinkypoo]

You're being ridiculous. You still pay your cell phone provider for service, even if you hack your phone, don't you?

Maybe; or maybe you cancel your service with them and take your phone somewhere else. Especially if you can show that they are shining you on when it comes to service or something, and get them to cancel your contract. They don't want phones unlocked because it gives you the freedom of choice.

Similarly, these systems will be DRM'd up the ying-yang to prevent you running something else on them, because Sun is going to make money not only off your initial purchase, but off maintenance. You will have no choice but to pay Sun (or Microsoft) for this maintenance because all patches will have to be signed before you can install them, and the OS will have to be signed before it can be installed.

This is very little like a cellular phone and much more like a console video game system. If you can hack it you can run linux on it and then Microsoft never recoups the cost of the system through licensing fees, so they don't want you doing that. Xbox version 1.5 is much harder to hack for just this reason, and last I checked no one had successfully done it without a modchip. Having to buy a potentially finicky modchip is a deterrent which prevents some people from hacking their Xbox.

Finally, in terms of what it makes sense to run on the Sun hardware - the Linux kernel has a boatload of functionality not found in Solaris. The only thing Solaris seems to have that Linux doesn't is drivers for a bunch of Sun stuff which you may not even be using. Now that Linux has support for big ass hardware, if you can get it to run on your systems, there are many compelling reasons to do so, especially if you don't need to buy commercial software, a need which has been much reduced with the successes of the Free Software movement.

Re:A return to appliances?

[mic256]

In my country until very recently all cell phone operators subsidized the device, locked you in, etc. About 2-3 months ago one of them decided to conduct an experiment - they have set up a new brand and said that you have to buy the phone yourself and in return you get much lower and very easy to understand prices (something like - 30 cents per minute always, whereas competitors offered something like - it's 30 cents per minute starting with second minute every second Friday and Tuesday starting from 20 till 7 but not from 11 to 11.47 and otherwise 78 cents). Clear, understandable rules, zero lock-in.
They got 1 million (!) customers within 8 weeks(!) in a 38.5 million country, where there are like 12 million cell phones total and GSM cell phones are available since around 1996.
They were so surprised by their own success that they had a shortage of starting sets for some time!

Re:A return to appliances?

[dgatwood]

But only for the people who don't know about the $2 generic cartridges on eBay and elsewhere. As consumers become more technically savvy, these sorts of schemes become harder and harder to maintain, hence we see the Lexmark suits in a desperate attempt to maintain control of an unmaintainable business model.

No, I'd say this is just another sign that the dinosaurs of the computer age (Sun and Microsoft) just don't understand modern consumers or the trends that have plagued every other high tech industry as they gained popularity among the general public.

Raise your hands.... How many people here rent their wired phones? How many buy the printer vendor's ink cartridges? How many people only get their computers serviced (and RAM added) at your "Authorized Reseller"? How many of you non-digital cable customers still rent your cable box? How many of you only use offical Kodak paper for printing photos or Xerox paper in your photocopier? Anyone? Anyone?

Vendor lock-in (monopolies notwithstanding) only works when there is little to no competition in the market and when the technology is sufficiently new or advanced that it has not yet become a commodity item. For example, cell phone technology is still changing so rapidly that there is some degree of lock-in (though the phones are cheap enough that this doesn't prevent people from changing companies). Same goes for digital cable. Within five years, digital cable tuners will be built into most mid-range TV sets. I'm not still not sure how long the commoditization of cell phones will take.

In any case, most people only put up with vendor lock-in for a certain period of time before they get sick of it. When they do, there are always alternatives waiting in the wings. No technology has ever gone from being a commodity to being a subscription service in my memory. I very much doubt that software will be the first---at least not successfully.

What I expect to happen is that we will see progressively -less- incentive to directly use a computer for general tasks. Instead, more and more devices around our homes will become more advanced, and special-purpose computing devices will pop up (TiVo, for example), not with subscription software at all, but with embedded software (which may or may not ever get upgraded).

The notion of software will become ever less important, and hardware will become an even greater driving force in the computer industry. There's no reason I couldn't have a word processor built into my TV set. Heck, there's no reason my cell phone couldn't take dictation.

Admittedly, some of those specialized devices will have subscription models for things like ongoing data feeds (TiVo's channel guides, for example), but that's a far cry from subscribing to the software itself. Also, I don't expect stand-alone computers to go away. Rather, they will provide the central mechanism for coordinating all of those advanced devices. The alternative is too horrible to imagine---vendor lock-in on data storage.... :-)

But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Re:A return to appliances?

[Reziac]

The article says,

Schwartz isn't alone in saying that hardware will someday be "free," so long as customers sign up for multiyear software subscriptions and services contracts. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates has said he believes that, within a few years, hardware will be free and that software will be bought on a subscription basis, rather than as a one-time purchase that must be upgraded routinely.

This isn't really much different from the already-common practice of giving away a cheap PC (average wholesale value about $300) with the requirement that you sign up for 3 years with MSN, AOL, or whoever.

And it neglects the fact that software by subscription is susceptible to forced upgrades and price hikes, which may well be built into the contract, and since you don't actually own anything, you have little or no control over.

Re:A return to appliances?

[pingveno]

I smell a challenge to meaningful competition. It's already bad enough with the stagnant IE; now many, many more products may be left behind by lazy vendors.

Re:A return to appliances?

[Minna Kirai]

The notion of software will become ever less important, and hardware will become an even greater driving force in the computer industry.

I don't agree. I even think that this statement is at odds with the rest of your predictions. A word processor in your TV? That's software. Dictation in your phone? Software again.

In both those cases, its just software running on a general-purpose computing platform.

Consider the statement not to be "Hardware SHOULD be free", but "Hardware WILL be free"- meaning not that software companies will provide complementary hardware alongside a subscription, but that Moore's Law and similar trends will bring down the price so much that replacing your PC is like changing a lightbulb.

You can see this happening already- the upgrade treadmill is slowing. PCs that were new in 2000 are still useful today (for non-gamers).

Free Market

[Karamchand]

I don't think the free market, specially normal consumers, will like subscription based goods. They want to pay once and then own the thing they paid for, not pay all the time they use it. Even if you have to "buy it once again" every few years.

Re:Free Market

[wawannem]

yeah, you're right dude, I mean, ever since I bought my cable converter outright I refuse to pay any monthly fee.... wait... uhmm... nevermind

Re:Free Market

[general_re]

I don't think the free market, specially normal consumers, will like subscription based goods. They want to pay once and then own the thing they paid for, not pay all the time they use it.

I'm constantly amazed by how popular auto leasing is in this country, and how many people are thereby effectively carrying car payments in perpetuity. With that in mind, I think your prognosis is iffy at best.

Re:Free Market

[DrEldarion]

Really? Tell that to the people who live in their rented apartments and drive to work in their leased cars while talking on their cell phones that they got for free with a 2-year contract.

Re:Free Market

[wankledot]

But see the difference between cars and computers is that cars lose their value very fast... oh... wait.

Re:Free Market

[Short Circuit]

I'm sure people who are interested in "new" computers wouldn't mind leasing them. And people who like to hack their hardware wouldn't mind buying them.

Without Microsoft interfering, I'd wager that people would lease hardware and software as a unit. However, I suspect Microsoft is going to want to charge their own subcription fees.

If you think about it, we have subcription fees already. You periodically pay for the upgrade to the next version of Windows, OSX or some distributions of Linux. The difference is we're currently free to continue using any of those products without being forced into upgrading using contract clauses.

Re:Free Market

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

"I'm constantly amazed by how popular auto leasing is in this country, and how many people are thereby effectively carrying car payments in perpetuity."

More evidence of how self-absorbed American's are...it's only for the vanity, look-at-me factor and "keeping up with the Jone's".

What most of them don't realize is that the Mr. Jones is a retard and has triple mortaged his nice little suburban home, expensive car (leased, not owned) and other trappings.

Most American's would do well to take Family Finance 101 again.

Re:Free Market

[pubjames]

I don't think the free market, specially normal consumers, will like subscription based goods.

What you have to bear in mind is that most people are bad at math.

Most people, when they see "$30 a month" don't think "$360 a year" as you and I might, they just see $30 and think - hey that's not much.

It's like those adverts you see that say "all this for just 50 cents a day!" - this is much more appealing to most people than saying $180 for the year, because most people aren't that good with numbers (otherwise nobody would ever play the lottery).

Re:Free Market

[Khomar]

This is exactly the problem I see with most of the big companies right now. They have forgotten to listen to their customers. Instead of asking what their customers want, they are telling customers that they, not the customers, really know what the customers want. They are basically trying to force their product down their customers' throats.

You see this in technology (Microsoft, SUN) and even in the music industry. It is far easier for them to try to force their product on customers than spend the time and effort to determine how to actually make the customer happy. Sometimes, they take it even further by developing a new field that no one really wants. For an example, take Internet appliances. They are trying to say that this will make life so much better, but are there actually a lot of people out there asking for these things? Also, look at a large number of the new "features" of Windows and Microsoft office. Did anyone actually ask for Clippy? Are there millions of customers demanding that there be more animation on their desktop? Most of these features are more annoyances than helps, and they certainly don't help people be more productive in their day-to-day work.

It really comes down to simple economics: supply and demand. They are trying to create demand for which they already have the supply, but as they continue to ignore the real demand, they are simply alienating their customers. It may not be as profitable in the short term, but if you can show customers that you can truly meet their needs, you will reap the rewards of loyalty and then ultimately... profit.

It takes work. Do we remember what is?

Re:Free Market

[Anne Thwacks]

I don't know which country that is, but here in the UK, leasing is popular, because the tax structure is massively rigged in its favour. If you have a car on a company lease, you effectively avoid taxes of 30%, and possibly considerably more.

Re:Free Market

[Billly Gates]

THey do so because they can not aford to pay for a house or car in cash.

People and businesses can pay for a newer computer or server in cash.

Those that dont pay monthly plans anyway.

Its outrageous that MS office and Windows costs more then A WHOLE COMPUTER!

I remember when software cost only $60 and the pc was $1500. What the hell is happening?

If leasing were cheaper businesses would be opting for it and SUN would be opposed to it.

Why does SUN and MS want subscriptions? Because they can take more money.

I will stick with owning my own hardware with Linux/FreeBSD and Openoffice thank you.

Re:Free Market

[JamesKPolk]

That's why Microsoft, Sun, and others support laws that make ownership impossible. They want their customers to be licensees, not owners.

Re:Free Market

[cubicledrone]

buying a car is about the worst investment a person can make.

It's not an investment, it's a purchase. Car companies thoroughly enjoy talking about major purchases as "investments" because it creates an artificial (and wrong) comparison weighted heavily in favor of the salespeople.

Cars, houses (as a residence) and appliances are not assets and they are not investments.

leasing doesn't sound too bad...

A car lease is a giant, maggot-infested, steaming rip-off.

I mean, the result of years of payments ends up being basically no equity anyways,

According to the car dealer.

Re:Free Market

[Mister Liberty]

Your analogy fails.

How popular would car leasing be if the leaser
would be locked by long-term contract into filling up at let's say Shell-stations only -- no matter what the competition's price would be.

This is just a ploy to render a knock-out to the FOSS community and FOSS consumers. If they succeed the consumer will be left without
any options and choice -- plus prob. some hardware that will be like a big brother and policeman to you.

Thanks for your time.

BJ

Re:Free Market

[ComputerSlicer23]

Actually, go look at it. I'm eligble for "A plan" from Ford (essentially, I get the best deal Ford offers to rank and file employees). My brother-in-law works in Ford Motor Credit, and can extend that plan to "Friends and Family".

I bought a truck essentially for the reasons you describe, and now I'm not sure it was the best idea. However, leasing was a very, very good deal for the first 4 years I did. Ford encouraged you to lease heavily. I think the buy vs. lease payments for my first truck was something like: $315 vs $500. Ford priced leasing so attractively, that it was very hard to turn down. They had rigged the system, so that leasing was always a winning proposition (I never paid for full depreciation value of the truck while I had it). Ford was always losing money on it, and hoped to make it up on the used market. The problem, was nobody wanted to pay the inflated used price (to make up for the value I didn't pay for), because it was a cheaper payment to lease then it was to buy.

The buyout price on my first truck was $450/month for 4 years. So I always got more value then I paid for, but theoretically, I wasn't getting the best deal I could have. However, I had a fixed price, full warrantee, other then gas and oil changes, I had no other costs. About the only thing that sucked about it, was you get screwed on miles. You either pay too much or pay too little. On my first lease, I didn't get enough, and ended up owing an extra payment for it. On my second lease, I ended up with an extra 12K miles I paid for, but never used. However, if you are a buy a new vehicle every 6-8 years kind of person, and don't put that many miles on it, buying was just stupid. Over the 6-8 year time frame buying was more expensive then leasing, even over the long term. You have to plan on owning a vehicle for 8-10 years for it to be a money saving proposition.

Leasing was a great deal 4-6 years ago. It was priced too cheaply to not do. At the time, not being able to drive to work was a serious problem. The extra reliability was worth it to me.

Now I'm trying to save money over the long haul, and I live within walking distance of work. So I bought.

Kirby

Re:Free Market

[StormReaver]

I don't think the free market, specially normal consumers, will like subscription based goods.

The market has already proven that customers will get sucked into perpetual payments (subscriptions) if the snow job is good enough.

People have been suckered into multi-year subscriptions to cell phones and cars which they will never own (or will own after paying exhorbitants amounts of cash).

Most people will fail to do the basic math that would clearly show how bad these subscriptions are, and will easily get taken in by slick ads and slicker (aka greasier) salespeople.

Never underestimate the overwhelming desire of people to not have to use their brain.

Re:Free Market

[jroos]

I personally am sick of recurring expenses. I'm being subscribed to death. It seems like everyone wants a piece of me, monthly.

I love the idea of Siruis/XM radio but I'm not buying because the last thing I need is another monthly bill. The only reason I have a TiVo is because they offered the lifetime subscription.

Let me pay up front for my software and hardware and I'll own it until it's doesn't work for me anymore.

If I have to pay every month, quarter or year just to run Bill's software, you can count me out. Count my family out too because I'll suffer the pain of switching them over to open source/free software.

Re:Free Market

[Paulrothrock]

Like Kirby vacuums. Guy came to sell on to my mother-in-law for $1 per day. She said she can't afford it.

"You can't afford $1 a day?" he said.

"No," she said, "I can't afford $365 per year."

So much for his commission on a $1,300 vacuum.

Re:Free Market

[bizitch]

Obviously you aren't privy to the magic of the Schedule C "actual expenses" write-off.

This is the main reason why people lease a car.

Unless you can take advantage of this write-off (i.e. primarily 1099 income) - you right.

They got it backwards

[tritone]

Software will be free and you'll pay for hardware.

Re:They got it backwards

[garcia]

Pipedream at best. It will continue on the way it is currently. Some people will pay for their hardware and choose to run free software. The rest of the world will run under Billy's rules and regulations and be happy when they can all interact easily with their DRM'd software formats.

Re:They got it backwards

[nizo]

Actually it is probably part of Sun's new exit strategy (err I mean market plan):
1. Release free hardware with software subscription.
2. People put Linux on it.
3. File bankruptcy!

I am willing to be a test subject for this

[da_reboot]

Send me all the free hardware you want!

Yeah, well

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they're giving hardware away, I'll take a Cisco CRS-1 router and a Beowulf cluster of GeForce 6800s.

I'll expect to take delivery of this equipment right after my Triphibian Atomicar rolls off the transporter from Swift Enterprises.

Seriously... a couple of years ago, Sun was telling us we'd all be running on glorified VT100 terminals. At what point do these clowns lose all credibility?

Re:Yeah, well

[deacon]

I *am* posting this from a VT100 terminal, connected to the serial port on my PC, you insensitive clod!

I use the VT52 as a footstool.

Re:Yeah, well

[MoneyT]

Well it isn't like companies aren't pushing for the glorified terminal setup. You buy games now that you can't play unless you pay your monthly subscription to the server. Microsoft has been pushing for the license not purchase system for a while. Sun may be off by a few years, but they may not be wrong.

Re:Yeah, well

[Cheetahfeathers]

If by 'glorified VT100 terminals' you mean SunRays, then I would guess you have never tried SunRays. That is one of the few areas in recent years where Sun has done things _right_. SunRays are a wonderful setup, but very misunderstood. Overall, they are fantastic. You wouldn't want an engineer doing 3D CAD on it, but for basic office use, mail, web, calendar, etc. it is a fantastic thing.

I was using a SunRay for years. The silence is beautiful, and the speed is generally fine. Of course I had to switch to Window Maker rather than the horrible CDE (Corporate Dictated Evil) or Gnome defaults, but that's just my preference. Try icewm or blackbox on it instead, if you wish.

I do hope they get a move on with a Linux port of SunRay software.

Re:Yeah, well

[Grishnakh]

You buy games now that you can't play unless you pay your monthly subscription to the server.

Speak for yourself. I don't own any such games, and would never buy one. I don't know anyone that would even care about such a thing. Maybe some teenagers and 20-somethings are willing to buy that crap, but a lot of people aren't: many (most?) console games are not networkable, and many people have just given up on modern games altogether. Of course, it's hard to measure how many people are playing MAME games instead of the latest 1st-person shooter since MAME isn't sold and doesn't have retail sales figures, much like it's nearly impossible to know how many people have abandoned MS and are using Linux that they downloaded or got a free CD of.

Re:Yeah, well

[Kevin Burtch]

Then someone needs to slap your network engineer, sysadmin, or whoever is cutting their budgets - and fast!

I've used SunRays at work and home, and deployed them for Universities, and everyone loves 'em.
There's even a local engineering firm using them for ECAD. They're hardly slow.

The slowness you're complaining about is undoubtedly a lack of network, CPU, or memory in the server. Easy enough to diagnose for a competent sysadmin.
My guess, with no information at all of your installation, is you have far too many SunRays installed on one 100mb subnet connected to a single 100mb port on the server, or you're using a shared network for them (very bad idea).

Re:Yeah, well

[MoneyT]

See EverQuest / SIMS online etc etc, the number of active users on these things isn't some anomoly. You're an exception. You don't buy these types of games, but you're also of the generation that has a use for MAME, that fully remembers the days of such games. These teenagers and 20 somethings you have such disdain for are the people that will be buying this stuff in the future. They are the consumers. So while you will be sitting happily playing MAME, you and your type of gamer will become more and more rare.

sdrawkcab

[Black Parrot]

He's welcome to send me all the free hardware he pleases.

Just an excuse to force DRM adoption.

[garcia]

Of course they want it to be free. Then they have full justification for a complete and utter lockdown of the hardware via DRM'd BIOS and OS with threats under the DMCA if we try to break it. No true ownership of the hardware by the user is exactly what they want.

Are general computer users going to buy a computer that isn't DRM'd just to use free software? I don't think so. They are going to use what's given to them as part of their OS license fee.

"Run our OS and never have to worry again! Just sign your name right here. The fine print doesn't say anything about selling your soul. Nope, not at all. Right there... That's riiiight."

Re:Just an excuse to force DRM adoption.

[Clinoti]

Indeed and the idea isn't even that well veiled for our crowd but for the plug and play consumer this is exactly what they are going to want, a computer that they can purchase or pick up at Best Buy that they can then take home, open the box, plug it into the wall via way of the large color coded wires and it comes with a tech in the box.

Best idea ever to impose and bring DRM into the mainstream market while simultaneously silencing the hardware modders, overclockers and OSS'ers under the threat of the law.

The only downsides for this with both MS and SUN are that they need to have the boxes run perfect software. The market would react horribly to a product that fails in this regard especially with MS's history of instability (old school) and Suns refusal to adopt or offer up (Java debacle). We could wind up with a legion of blue screened remote managed zombies or a legion of boxes that don't work with anything else. Interesting indeed.

Re:Just an excuse to force DRM adoption.

[garcia]

We could wind up with a legion of blue screened remote managed zombies or a legion of boxes that don't work with anything else.

And the beauty of MS' plan is seen. Don't you remember how people just accepted reboots with Win9x? "Oh yeah, I have to restart my machine 7 or 8 times a day."

Do you think that they are going to complain when they are seriously under the belief that they didn't have to pay for the hardware?

Re:Just an excuse to force DRM adoption.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

This is so insightful it diserves to be on billboards across the country (and i'm talking about the ones on the highways) and not bbs's :)

Frankly the DRM fight is already lost, and by lost i mean we've lost. The public is just too dumb when it comes to the subtle aspects of computers. That includes proper pc security, installing software, even knowing what a directory is. Hell half of the folks out there think they're called "folders" ;)

And those folks dont know what to put in those folders.

They have such a poor grasp of technology. The masses that is. They're not the geeks that we are. They didnt grow up with vic20s, apple 2es, c64s, atari computers, 12mhz 286s, or 486's running teleguard bbs's housing pirated warez. They never had to learn what an IRQ is, or what autoexec.bat does...

They never had to learn HAYES modem commands to reset their models, or init them.

These are the same folks that use PC's like toasters, and how many Americans do you know that can explain how their toaster works?

Point made i think.

We've lost the fight because the industry will do as it pleases, and the public will accept whatever marketing they throw at them. And the marketing will not mention a dam thing. If SUN has its way... it would go somethign like this....

"Pick up your FREE COMPUTER at BESTBUY when you buy a copy of our OS"

It wont mention a dam thing about the DRM restrictions. People will flock to the new marketing idea. "WOW A FREE FUCKING PC?!... I'm so there dude"

Its a lost cause... DRM is going to succeed because we dont have an educated civilization that understands the finer points of technology, or even the basics of the constitution.

If in the near future, you can buy longhorn and get a free top of the line pc... forget it. War over. The masses will flock to it faster than flies to shit.

Its still worth fighting for though. I'm glad folks are still up for the task... because its a mountain bigger than any other.

We're already in the hole because of this very fact. Look at the EULA situation You agree that you're liscensing, and not OWNING your copy of windows. Frankly this is just bullshit, and the public simply doesnt understand, or care about it at all. They dont even read the EULA, and yet they're forced to agree to it.

Consumers arent that smart, and that is why capitalism has become pretty perverse from the top down.

Its the publics responsibility to insure that they are not taken advantage of. The problem is the public simply does not have the education to recognize every specific detail reguarding every unique buying situation, no matter what the product or item.

How many here are car experts? Computer experts, Biologists, etc.. How many know the finer points of HDTV, or a washing machine?... How about law, or how your plumbing works?... How many of us... KNOW IT ALL?

None of us know enough to protect ourselves as consumers in every situation especially those outside the fields of geek like interest (and that could be cars, computers whatever you're geeky about)

The public barely understands computers. They teach flash in highschool these days... and 1 out of 30+ kids in the class can actually do anything with flash.

Its amazing that they teach flash, when they should be teaching programming, or computer manufacturing... how to configure your pc for security, what irq's are... etc I mean theres so much more that needs to be taught before people jump into Flash, or AOL :)

Its just too dam risky for folks to be that ignorant.

And its that fact that DRM will be implemented whenever the software/hardware makers want. Because we're not big enough, loud enough to make a difference, and some of you even work for the suits that push DRM in the first place.

I want free Sun hardware

[nereid666]

where can i get it for free? I want a 15k multi-domain system :-)

Cars will be Free

[Anonymous Coward]

I think cars will be free too.

We will just pay for gas and service.

I think Sun stock will be "free" too, if you know what I mean.

Free?

[FuzzyDaddy]

I don't think that they really mean hardware will be free - only that it will be a loss leader.

It's funny that the same people who decry free software as killing the economic incentive for software development don't feel the same thing applies to hardware.

Re:Free?

[iabervon]

Everybody wants to kill the economic incentive for doing the thing they don't want to try to sell, because it transfers business to the next thing over, which they do want to sell.

Or, at least, the smart ones do. The dumb ones don't understand the economics. This is why Oracle is so clever: they now use x86 commodity hardware (and subcontract it to Dell), Linux for the OS to kill that market, subcontract out support to Red Hat, and then get a huge margin on database servers. Of course, this plan depends on having a clear long-term strategy and sticking with it (sell the database, make everything else cheap).

Sun is going to have a really hard time because they keep changing their mind on what the strategy is. The right strategy would have been to open source Java from the beginning and write apps. Instead, they've tried to keep control of the Java VM, which doesn't actually help them. They've been vague on whether the market for hardware and OSes should stay profittable. They seem to be trying to get into the desktop market where they don't have any particular experience or market share.

Sounds familiar...

[spikev]

Didn't we hear this from Sun about 10 years back when they were pushing client-server computing. Look where that got them. Now that serious client-server computing could become a reality, they're going pushing free hardware with another spin on it.

No thanks Sun!

[Ckwop]

I know that while I have a dollar (well pound really) I'll pay for my own flaming hardware. Because you know that once they've eased this on us your machine will end up being their machine. And once that happens you can be sure as hell that machine is going to make it difficult to run linux or any other operating system.

No thank you Bill & SUN. I want to pay for my hardware thanks because I actually want to own it. This isn't about choice, it's about fattening the pockets of Sir Bill.

Simon

Great!

[phraktyl]

Back it up. Just a little more... A little more... Perfect!

Now, Honey, don't you think that E15K makes a great replacement for that china cabinet we used to have? And all I had to do was purchase a software license for StarOffice!

Free, for a fee

[1010011010]

I'm sure Microsoft and Sun won't give me a new Netra or XBox if I call them up.

What Schwartz ("Use the schwartz!") and Gates really mean is, "your software fee will include the hardware fee, and you won't really have a choice about that. Plus, we will add restrictions to the hardware, such as DRM. Thank you, come again!"

But I'm a hobbyist

[kneecarrot]

As a hobbyist who enjoys tinkering inside my machine, I'm really starting to feel like my days are numbered.

With DRM in the bios and computers becoming essentially free appliances will I still be able to tinker in the future?

Hardware won't be free

[hattig]

Just subsidised.

I'll still be paying for hardware and running Linux / FreeBSD on it. I'm not paying MS or Sun to get someone else's idea of "good enough" hardware at a per-month contract payment.

Counter-Intuitive

[philovivero]

Those guys are geniuses. Hardware will be free. Software will cost money.

Because making hardware is as simple as typing "cp SunE450 SunE450.2" and making new software requires factories, tooling up, shipping, and maintenance.

I disagree. I think both Microsoft and Sun will become obsolete and useless as they continue to try to trap people into their DRM and obsolete-by-design software while manufacturers of good hardware will continue to make some money, and software will become more and more Libre ("free").

I think that the only money that will come in from software will be from developers and coders that maintain existing Open Source software, and create novel new Open Source software for contract (hourly wages).

But I'm just a lowly DBA, not a forward-thinking visionary overpaid stuffed-shirt like these guys, so by all means, bank your future on their brilliance.

Free hardware eh?

[Xpilot]

'In our world, you will subscribe to the software and the hardware is free.'

I have a better proposal. You give me the free hardware, and I don't subscribe to your software and write my own. Eh, does that violate some law somewhere?

sed 's/free/rented/g'

[Darth RadaR]

I wonder... If I stop paying my "subscription", will a van will stop by and repo my hardware?

this makes no economic sense

[CAIMLAS]

This makes no economic sense for anyone except for the people selling software.

Software is the cheapest thing to produce in terms of what needs to go into it physically besides R&D. People have to pay whatever (artificially set) price the company sets, as without software, hardware is just a large paper weight.

Hardware, on the other hand, is the more expensive side of the equation: there's only so much profit margin available, as people are only willing to pay a certian amount.

I can see people like him and BG saying "hardware will be free" because that's what they want to see - then there will be more money available for software licenses. This is completely impractical until the massive investment required simply to fabricate hardware is negligible - in other words, it's unlikely to happen anytime within the next 10 years.

If anything, market trends are going the other way entirely. I'm not sure why Sun would be that concerned - they've traditionally had some incredible hardware - but MS has everything to lose in a commodity market.

Sun best stick to their recently-stated purpose of having an Apple-like setup, where they sell the hardware and the OS sales. The OS in use is insignificant, really, IMO - they just need something that works well on their hardware. That might be their OS, and it might be Linux.

Wrong

[Bertie]

For one simple reason. Hardware's tangible, software isn't. No matter what these guys do, people will always struggle to get their heads round the idea of paying for software, because it doesn't take up space in their room and can be reproduced ad infinitum. Same goes for music, films, etc., and I'd say it always will. If the Suns and Microsofts of the world don't start accepting this and going with the flow, they're sunk.

I mean, here I am working on my PC (which I bought and put together myself) running Gentoo (which I downloaded and didn't pay a brass farthing for). Microsoft sell as many copies of Windows as they do because they bundle them with new hardware. Who do you know who's ever bought a copy of Windows off the shelf? If the PC came out of the factory with no OS and I wanted to put Windows on it, I'd ask around till I found a friend with a pirate copy - there's just no way I'd haul myself to a shop to buy one. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not right, but that's the way it is, and these guys should embrace it instead of fighting it.

Shhh

[Anonymous Coward]

We've already got the (mostly) free software part, let them give us the free hardware and we'll be all set. ;)

Here comes the DRM

[doorbot.com]

Will the hardware really be "free"? Or will it just be the medium upon which the software is provided (and runs of course)?

If the hardware is actually free, and I own it, then that might not be so bad. I do expect it to be DRM'd to death, and basically only be usable with the software provided.

But if it's not free, and it's merely rented to you (at no charge), then breaking the DRM on your own box will definitely land you in hot water.

Is this the Microsoft method to combating free software? That just seems like a losing battle... I can make unlimited copies of my Linux CDs, but it is physically impossible to "copy" a PC. So yes, they can produce PCs for a very low (marginal) cost, but the marginal cost of a PC will still be many times more than the marginal cost of copying a Linux install CD or disk image.

While support contracts may be one way to make money with free software, and even with proprietary or non-free software, I can't imagine this as anything more than a ploy to force a subscription model and DRM'd hardware down the customers' throats.

of course that's what he's going to say

[Cheeze]

Sun doesn't make any money off of hardware, their cash crop is selling software services.

Those guys need to stand up and smell the roses. hardware will NOT be free because it will take resources to produce it. If you expend resources, you are going to want to recoup those costs by charging the end user for spending time to develop and produce the hardware product.

Software is the part that is easily reproduced, and can easily be made free.

Sun and Microsoft are software vendors (Yeah, Sun makes hardware, but they shouldn't if you ask me). They both make money in the software, so it is in their best interest to spin their technology the way that makes them the most money, even if that is pulling the wool over the eyes of their customers.

Hardware not really free, just paid for monthly.

[Sxooter]

The hardware will NOT be free. The cost will simply be rolled into the price of the software. This is simply a marketing ploy to try and lock people into non-open hardware with cheap up front costs that just keep repeating over and over.

It's not gonna work, but I'm sure Sun and Microsoft are gonna try anyway.

Perfect!

[Cyberllama]

I'll take their free hardware and run my free software on it.

Let battle commence

[Space cowboy]

Looking at it logically: if hardware is 'free' (or nearly so) the only way to make money is on the software, either by subscription, by initial purchase, on services layered on top of the software/hardware, or some combination. This is all fine and dandy in the 'normal' world where people wander down to a store and buy a Windows PC or a Mac.

Look at it from the Open Source point of view - on the scale of these corporations, there's little money to be made on subscriptions without them being expensive (read: unpopular) subscriptions (eg: the redhat network has just become a lot more expensive...) so all that's left is services. It seems to me that IBM have pretty much everything going for them in that market: worldwide cover, experience, brand name, and expertise. So that's a no-no too.

Whoops, "we"'ve run out of ways to make money - so large subscription-based companies are going to look upon the OS world as nasty competition (can't be bought, can't easily be bribed - some sod will fork the code if you do, and it's at least as good as the proprietary offerings, not to mention free). Cue drum rolls, thunder and lightning, cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war!

It's going to be interesting. Patents will play out their part of course, Linux/just-about-anything will infringe on loads of patents, but we may still have IBM in our corner over that one - they've several thousand employees who work on linux for IBM, which is a significant investment... If a 400lb gorilla decides to screw you, the thing to do is befriend a decidedly asexual 800lb gorilla... Thanks IBM.

Simon

Sounds like the old Divx vs. DVD models

[zeotherm]

I remember back when DVDs were new, they had to compete with Divx discs. The difference, DVDs were expensive, but you paid once and owned it, Divx was cheap, but you had to pay each time you watched it... This seems like a good analog to this debate, and time has already shown how a market responds to subscription based technology goods. How many people ran out to buy the new divx disc of "Return of the King"? - ZT

Innovation vs. Replication

[grunt107]

There will be attempts, like Sun and MS, to have subscription-based apps and supplied hardware. The hardware and software will be succeeding edge, not leading edge. I see this as the path for businesses mostly, and some home users that get their internet bundled w/apps and a free (or cheap computer). Since most businesses today are concerned about cost over benefit if their hardware upgrades happen from and are supported by their app vendors then most of their apparent IT infrastructure (OS/app/hdwe support) will be hidden in the vendor costs. A second tier will be the innovators - businesses that create new technology (and their disciples) to be eventually passed to the masses. A third tier will be the disruptors, who will not abide by forced upgrades and constant payment schedules. This tier is most likely the home of most Open Source projects (with some in the innovators group), IMO (I am not humble!!!).

Will Joe User go for it?

[jdreed1024]

This isn't a completely new idea. Look at cell phones. You can get the phone for free (a crap phone, but it works) and then you pay monthly for the service. Or the budding music/audiobook industry where you get a player (again, a crap player, but it works) for free if you subscribe for a year. (Examples are Napster and Audible, obviously Apple doesn't give a free player if you buy an iTMS account)

I could easily see a future where if you subscribe to Microsoft products for a year, you get a free PC. PCs are dirt cheap anyway.

The question is not whether or not it's possible or feasible. The question is whether Joe Consumer will go for it? There are already a fair number of things that a consumer licenses instead of owning (DRM music, etc). And it works largely because Joe Consumer is ignorant of the details and relies on the companies to tell him why what they're doing is a good idea.

But once it starts leaving the high-tech market and hitting closer to home, there's more pushback. I'll cite everyone's favorite example of DivX (the players, not the codec). Buy a movie but you only get to watch it a set number of times? Yeah, that worked real well. I'm not convinced giving away the players would have fixed that. Disposable self-destructing DVDs crapped out for the same reason, and for environmental reasons. Why? Because people were used to buying DVDs (and, before that, VHS tapes) and owning them, and playing them as many times as they wanted until they broke or the dog ate them, or whatever. And when someone comes along and says "Sorry, you now need to pay to watch this", they say "Um, no."

Consumers have been used to purchasing and owning computers and owning software (yeah, yeah, it's licensed, we know, but so are videotapes technically - 'Licensed for Private Home Viewing' - and we still talking about 'owning' them). So there might be a fair bit of pushback. However, consumers are equally pissed off at their hardware and software becoming obsolete so frequently. So they might just pull this off if it's plugged as the solution to constant upgrading. Time will tell.

Somebody forgot to tell Apple

[goombah99]

Of course the hardware will NOT be free. You will be renting it by paying for the software. Hardware that is indistinguishable will probably be free. Hardware that is nice, like say an ipod or an imac, you will pay for. everyone else will buy a dell.

The difference will be the difference between taking the Bus or trolley, and driving your car. The bus is convenient if you like it, but it does not have cup holders or corrinthian leather seats. For that you need to go to apple and buy the ibus.

this suggests that in the end only sony and apple will be the niche luxury hardare vendors.

It's sort of ironic that some people think that music will be nearly free and you will buy the players and some people think the players will be free and you will subscribe to the music. Which is it slashdotters? make up your minds.

Even if this comes to pass, that software is what you subscribe too, I suspect apple will make the transition. NeXT had a go at this and had a limited success. But they were starting with a death spiraling product that had no established base. Apple has people who want apples software. So they will have the subscribers even if they have to give away the hardware.

of course they will have to charge you more than $100 per OS upgrade.

thus what it comes down to is economies of scale, standards compliance, and the willingness of your niche subscribers to pay a premium. On the one hand one has MS which has the economy of scale and flouts standards as a competative tactic. and ont he other one has Apple which knows how to create products and create standards that people really want. In the middle SUN has none of these attributes except in a very niche area of sun fanatics.

It just doesn't make any sense....

[Gigahertz]

I'd like to give these big names some benefit of the doubt, but I'm having an extremely hard time doing so...

Hardware is a physical tangible item, produced by people and machines, the product of (usually) years of development and testing... Each item has a cost and uses up materials.

Software is just data, still the product of people, using machines, but theres no per-item production costs for digital distribution, and for normal distribution it's no different than audio cd's/dvd's, one unique master set of data gets duplicated...

Traditionally software was bundled with hardware, and I can't think of a realistic application that could succeed as a software package with bundled hardware.

They can't mean that hardware will be no-strings-attached free, handed out on street corners, no value what-so-ever...

Hardware cost is meaningless to me. I rationalize this by saying "I drive my car 40 minutes a day on average, and I use a computer 10 hours a day on average. My car costs 26k, the computer 3k." I could build an insanely godlike system for less than 3k, well worth it if you ask me.... I can install it using entirely free software, linux, openoffice, firefox, etc.

What in the hell are these people talking about?!

It's not even gratis.

[Arker]

They're completely twisting the language here, which is nothing new. They don't mean free as in speech, or free as in beer (gratis) what they mean is the price will be hidden in the software price. You'll be paying as much or more, they just won't itemise it or offer the hardware for honest sale.

So you'll get a software 'subscription' and the hardware to run it on in a single package, totally locked in.

No one in their right mind would sign up for this without huge, unsustainable bribes and/or being taken in by confusing double-talk and deception. I expect they'll be trying to use both in spades to get a stranglehold on the market, then make it back in rent once they have that. But it seems unlikely they'll succeed, thankfully. One more desperate attempt to try and lock competition out of the market.

Re:It's not even gratis.

[timeOday]

Mod parent up!

The hardware will be "free" in the same way as the "free" cell phone you get with a three-year lock-in service contract obliging you to pay hundreds of dollars to "get out" early.

In other words, not free at all.

Re:It's not even gratis.

[_anomaly_]

I wonder if anyone has notified hardware vendors/manufacturers that their products will no longer be for sale directly to the consumer.
(some sarcasm is implied in my post)

Re:It's not even gratis.

[johkir]

I work in a hospital where much of our lab equipment comes as part of a package deal. The Heomdialysis Unit, for instance, has multiple types of machines, from various vendors. For about $20k a piece, we get a machine, and the software to run it. We get software upgrades and hardware upgrades *FREE* with our service contract. The nice thing about it is, no one at the hospital has to know how to program them, and when one breaks, a service rep comes out to fix it, with time, travel, and parts included. We even get new machines as models are upgraded. You could easliy market this as state of the art software, with free hardware to run it. The hardware is so specialized though, that we can't do much else with it, so it may as well be free.

These are some of the things molecules will do....given a few billion years - Carl Sagen

Re:It's not even gratis.

[Grishnakh]

I don't know that buying your own phone+contract is cheaper.

It's not. It's cheaper to just sign away your soul on the contract, take the free (or cheap since it's subsidized) phone, and live with the multi-year contract.

I'm as much against being sucked into leases and subscription business models as the next Slashdotter, but I do have a cellphone with a two-year plan, and the reason was the cost. My options were: 1) buy my own phone and get a separate contract (too expensive), 2) get a contract with cheap phone, 3) get landline phone service, or 4) don't get a phone at all. #2 was the cheapest, and most convenient in every way. After long-distance charges, landline phone service is far more expensive than cellular service, plus the monopoly that runs it around here (Qwest) has the most horrible service and customer support of almost any company in recorded history. And, you have to be at home to use it... what a pain. #4 is just silly unless you have no friends, no family, and no life. And #1 was simply more expensive than #2, and not all that useful either since (in the USA) the phones are more-or-less tied to the provider since all the providers use different technologies and frequency bands (CDMA vs. GSM, etc.).

The problem with comparing phone service to this ridiculous "the hardware will be free" concept that Sun and MS are now touting is that, with phones, there is no viable alternative to getting monthly phone service with some big company. You can't just become your own phone company, install your own phone lines across the country to your relatives, etc. If you want to get along in this society where having a phone of some type is basically mandatory (which isn't necessarily a bad thing; communication makes life a lot easier), you have to pick some company to get your service from.

Not so in computing. The Free Software/OSS movement has been around for quite some time, and is continually picking up steam. If you want operating system software, you can purchase licenses from Sun or MS for $$$, or you can use Linux or *BSD for free (and buy support contracts if you choose, etc.). There's many options. If you're a corporation mindlessly locked into MS software and a 2-year upgrade cycle, this "free hardware" (leased hardware in reality) concept may make some sense, but if you'd rather own your own stuff, and would rather upgrade when you feel you need to instead of when some big company thinks you need to, this concept is useless. In the end, I think both models will survive.

It's a little like leasing a car vs. buying one. I personally see no sense whatsoever in leasing a car, but a lot of people do it for some reason. Probably because the dealership salesmen managed to sucker them into it. For people like me who see no need to get rid of a car after 2 or 3 years, when it's barely broken-in, and would rather keep it 10-15 years and not make monthly payments forever, leasing is useless, and apparently there's enough people like me that leasing, while it exists, competes with buying and still doesn't constitute a majority of new-vehicle sales I believe.

Re:It's not even gratis.

[rifter]

They're completely twisting the language here, which is nothing new. They don't mean free as in speech, or free as in beer (gratis) what they mean is the price will be hidden in the software price. You'll be paying as much or more, they just won't itemise it or offer the hardware for honest sale.

So you'll get a software 'subscription' and the hardware to run it on in a single package, totally locked in.

No one in their right mind would sign up for this without huge, unsustainable bribes and/or being taken in by confusing double-talk and deception. I expect they'll be trying to use both in spades to get a stranglehold on the market, then make it back in rent once they have that. But it seems unlikely they'll succeed, thankfully. One more desperate attempt to try and lock competition out of the market.

This may also be spun much like the recent DirectTV scams. One of the most important objections to DirectTV is the requirement that you buy hundreds of dollars of hardware (useless for any other purpose) in order to use their service. So recently they started an ad campaign claiming that they were making their hardware free for a limited time.

Of course the fine print was that you actually do pay hundreds of dollars for the hardware, up front, then they charge $19.95 less than they say they could have each month (still leaving a hefty bill) and then claim this discount pays you back the money you gave them for the hardware (which is most certainly not considered yours since they do not allow you to do whatever you want with it and demand access to it at all times).

So it is possible you will buy a $300 Dell computer with $300 off on the $800 Windows/Office licenses (or $50 a month until you return the computer in perpetuity). Of course what Bill Gates is leading into is getting computers to the point where cell phones are now, where you cannot switch vendors because the hardware is locked to a vendor, with the additional fun that the computer is not suitable for any other purpose than what Microsoft intends. In other words, it will run their software and no other, and will come with a contract stating that you will not run non-Microsoft software. When these are the only computers, Microsoft's dreams will at last be true.

Re:It's not even gratis.

[h4rm0ny]

I have only one thing to add to what you said, but I think it worth mentioning.

Unlike your leasing a car analogy, there is still a great deal of progress in the computer industry. Okay, yes, new models of cars do come out, and [too] many people care about having the latest. But has the speed of cars doubled in the last four years? Has the size of their Hard Drive, I mean petrol tank increased every year?

This makes a stronger case for getting the new model than leasing an increasingly out of date older model.

I started this post out in a negative frame of mind, but I've just realized, that this would actually help Linux.

Re:It's not even gratis.

[romanval]

That's an easier analogy to dispute: Is the general public more productive on a current PC rather then a 3 yr old one?

I mean, I'd understand it's a tool of the trade-- the cluster computing engineer would have enough reason to use the best/fastest, but my work PC is a 1Ghz PIII, win2k, and I only use Office on it. It works so well that I can't find any incentive to upgrade at all. All my relatives have PC's that aren't much faster-- and feel no need to upgrade either.

whoops, lunch break's over...

Rented life

[GrouchoMarx]

We went through this once before with Ma Bell. You didn't own your phone, you rented it from the phone company, who could futz with it whenever and however they wanted. They also had no incentive to ever upgrade it. My parents still have an ancient phone in their kitchen that is owned by the phone company, even though legally they are required to let you connect your own phone.

Now, these companies want to do the same with computers. You don't own anything, you merely rent it as part of a service contract. Car companies want you to lease a car, rent an apartment...

HELL NO! When possible, you always want to own your stuff instead of leasing it. For one thing, its financially more advantageous. (Take good care of it, and the cost over its lifetime is lower.) For another, it gives you equity for loans and other transactions. For another, it frees you of the control of the leasing party.

Me: You know, I want to try some different software that MS doesn't offer in their archive.
MS: OK, fine, give us your computer back.
Me: What? No way, dude, all of my personal files are on here.
MS: Gee, sucks to be you. Guess you're stuck giving us money just to read your own data. Neener neener!

And that's just one example. The only compromise point I could see would be the way mobile phone companies subsidize the cost of a mobile phone with a service agreement, but that's a "lease to buy" arrangement at best. When it's over, that is YOUR phone by law, and even before that it's still your phone, you just have to pay an early termination fee and the phone is still yours. MSN used to do that with low-end PCs before they realized that no one wanted it.

Live Free. Own your life. Own yourself.

Re:Rented life

[andy55]

Me: You know, I want to try some different software that MS doesn't offer in their archive.
MS: OK, fine, give us your computer back.
Me: What? No way, dude, all of my personal files are on here.
MS: Gee, sucks to be you. Guess you're stuck giving us money just to read your own data. Neener neener!

Hrm, you could add the following step and all your problems are solved:

Me: Ok, I'll burn all my personal files to a DVD and I'll have the computer back to you in an hour.

No need to thank me.

No, it'll be this way

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Step 1: Sun gives out hardware for free with Microsoft and Sun proprietary software

Step 2: Large numbers of businesses, who would pay for software anyway, get new free great DRM hardware.

Step 3: These same large businesses now throw out all of their old, non-DRM, non-Compatible hardware.

Step 4: Geeks like us go dumpster diving in a sea of free hardware.

Step 5: Install OSS on free hardware.

Step 6: ?

Step 7: Profit!!!!!

Two competing models

[Quixote]

There are two competing models here.
1. Hardware is "free", software costs money. Analogy would be the cable TV box. You get the box for free, but you pay for the software (programming).
2. Hardware costs money, software is "free". Example would be broadcast media (broadcast TV, radio).

Guess which one the conglomerates like? (hint: 1).

Only time will tell which model succeeds.

Unlike the TV/Radio industry, the content in the computer world can be created by anyone (hence the FLOSS movement). This would seem to tip the balance in favor of #2.

Unless, of course, suitable laws can be passed... and seeing how apathetic the voters are ("look! over there!! shiny things!!!"), it is only a matter of time before writing software becomes encumbered with patents, licensing (i.e. software professionals will have to be "certified"), etc., thereby tipping the balance in favor of #1 above.

Sun Hardware Will Be Free

[tickleboy2]

At least you will be able to get it for next to free on the auction block after Sun goes bankrupt. :)

This will be a shell game

[xyloplax]

I doubt they will be giving away hardware independent of the software. It's the equivalent of saying "free water" and charging $5 for the cup with a "no cup without water" policy.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[ron_ivi]

"akin to the cell phone market"

I seem to recall a time where you didn't own the telephone in your house either, but the phone company gave you one with your subscription. Anyone know how&why that model changed?

Schwartz is confused, Sun is doomed.

[twitter]

The article claims that Schwartz thinks, - the hardware, software, storage and its interlinks - is fast becoming a commodity.

He's very confused, evil or misquoted. Hardware already is a commodity but commodities still cost money, just like corn, wheat and other honest stuff. It's shocking that someone at such a high level of a firm that excels in hardware design would have failed to notice that. Once can only conclude that Schwartz has decided to collude with Microsoft in their mad attempt to eliminate free software.

Sun is doomed. The traditional commercial software development process ran out of steam twenty years ago. Proprietary software can not compete with free software and those who cling to it will be swept away. Schwartz is going to run Sun into the ground. I really hope Schwartz was misquoted, but that does not seem to be the case.

Re:Schwartz is confused, Sun is doomed.

[Eternal Cynic]

The traditional commercial software development process ran out of steam twenty years ago. Proprietary software can not compete with free software and those who cling to it will be swept away.

I won't argue the long-term prospects for commercial software, but to state that the process "ran out of steam twenty years ago" is just asinine. A whole lot of companies have made a whole lot of money selling software in that time period. It's only been in the last couple years that non-proprietary software has made any significant inroads into Corporate America.

I disagree with the CEO of Sun, because of TiVo

[wls]

There's a big problem with software-services, and that is that the consumer doesn't feel like they're getting the same "value" (whatever that is) that they get when they have something they can hold in their hands. With hardware, you can usually repurpose it, but with software, you feel like you're held hostage and we know that companies sometimes stop support (DOS, QuickBASIC, J#) if not disappear altogether. Even though alternate guide services exist, I like TiVo's, but feel secure by TiVo's policies toward [friendly] hackers.

Witness TiVo, by far the best piece of consumer electronic to come along in a long while. To get the full value, you need to buy a TiVo box -and- get a lifetime subscription. Now, pretend you're standing in BestBuy in the TiVo section and you're looking at price tags.

Alternate Universe #1: Buy a TiVo box for $50 and purchase the lifetime service for $450. How do you feel? (Personally, I wonder why the box is so cheap and how long they'll stay in business.)

Alternate Universe #2: Buy a TiVo box for $450 and purchase a lifetime service for $50. How do you feel? (Now, I feel like getting several boxes.) ...what changed? The fact that I'm walking out of the store holding something I *perceive* to put value in. I can see the TiVo box. I can't see the service.

Incidently, this is why a $250 box with $250 service causes so many consumers to sit there and ponder about making the plunge. (You should. -ed.)

The point being that free hardware is perceived as cheap hardware, even if it isn't. We also know, free hardware gets repurposed. (Witness the Cue:CAT barcode readers.)

No, if I'm going to have to pay for software, I want it to be like Apple's model for OS X -- everytime an update comes out, I *want* to shell out cash to get the new, _stable_, features that breath new life into my system.

I do NOT want to have to deal with the hassle of license codes.

As for me, sell me the hardware -- give me the software.

What about my "l33t" modded rig?

[killdashnine]

For your "Average Joe Computer User" or "Joe Corporate Guy", this might be fine. My Mom would obviously benefit from this, but for power users and hardware enthusiasts, this is doesn't make sense. Big corporations may be ok too as you don't need much to run Microsoft Office really.

The high-cost of hardware components like top end video cards, for example, is what drives profits for the manufacturers, sells games, and continues to press the envelope of tech forward. It also seems to be the hallmark of the true computer geek. Who's going to go to a LAN with a "free" rig and would it actually play anything decent? ... Sheesh, that'd be like having an "all Playstation" LAN (shudders).

Computers aren't like cell phones or XBoxes ... if you take what "they" give you for free, it's going to be junk. Furthermore, I can imagine the chaos that would ensue when hackers get their hands on this stuff. Hardware hacks (chipmods and stuff) go deeper underground and the software AND hardware companies lose even more money.

In other news

[jmv]

Intel announces software, not hardware will be free.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[sydb]

In the UK phone rental used to be around five pounds a quarter.

Seeing as basic phones cost about 10 pounds, the new model is definitely in the customer's favour.

Actually sounds like a money spinner for the phone companies! Surprising this doesn't happen any more... perhaps people just wanted better phones and weren't taking up the rental option.

A Preview of their defenition of "FREE"

[the MaD HuNGaRIaN]

Check it out:

http://developers.sun.com/offers/jedevpromo/

You buy a 3 years subscription at 1500 per year, and they "give" you a "$7000" server.

Excuse me, but for that same $4500, I would rather buy an XSERVE.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[Grishnakh]

I was very young at that time, but I think consumers got fed up with the situation where they could only have one phone in the entire house, or had to pay hefty monthly fees for additional phones. I believe this spurred the government to change the law so that property owners owned the lines inside their houses (previously, Ma Bell owned the actual wiring, even though it was inside your walls!), and could purchase their own phones if they wanted.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[Anonymous Coward]

The government mandated it with the breakup of the "Ma Bell" single phone company. Part of their monopoly was with service, so they split into the "Baby Bells" regionally, then had to allow competition later within those markets. The other part of the monopoly was in physical equipment. You weren't allowed to connect a non-Bell phone to your line. They had a proprietary connector, which they had to replace with the RJ45 jacks everyone has now. That standard jack allowed citizens (aka consumers - I hate that term!) to connect phones made by anyone.

Well, gee whiz!

[DaveJay]

If Microsoft and Sun think that hardware will be free, shouldn't every single hardware manufacturer (from the smallest peripherals on up) be writing drivers for Linux, commoditizing the software before the software makers commoditize the hardware?

More than it already is, I mean. ;)

No they won't bother to take it back.

[twitter]

I wonder... If I stop paying my "subscription", will a van will stop by and repo my hardware?

That's an interesting question.

The answer seems easy, no, they won't bother. Someone else mentioned cell phones and that's a good example of how this will work. Why bother to go get those? Your subscription fee will already have paid for the device many times over. No one else will want your used equipment and it will cost money to collect. Because the software is not free (libre), they can turn a remote kill switch and make it useless to you so that you have to purchase another one. If you refuse to mail the hardware back to them at your cost, you will be charged some absurd fee as per your contract. No repo van required.

Danger of Free Hardware

[midifarm]

There's an inherent danger in the proposal to free hardware.

First and foremost condition would be that all computers would be the same configurations. While the idea of "appliancizing" computer hardware would be wonderful for the consumer in the long run it's counterproductive. Software is more complex than say a television broadcast. While the thematic content may vary amongst shows, the medium conforms to all TV sets nationwide. NTSC or PAL is the format and there's no straying. Enhancements are only allowed for audio, and now HD is becoming more commonplace; however, new hardware must be purchased to take advantage of the new innovations.

Which brings me to my second point, the lack of true innovation. Software writes will become more or less problem solvers than true code writers where the sky's the limit. By problem solvers I'm referring to the need to find work arounds all the limitations of the hardware to perform whatever the desired task is. Computer configurations change and improve like the wind, but without innovations and improvements, not only in speed, but connectivity etc., we are forced to stagnate. By all theoretical laws we should've maxxed the computing potential power of silicon, yet we still see improvements.

We need forward thinking companies to push the envelope. The elements of design and function are integral to progress of computing. Without invention, originality and breakthroughs we the consumers are doomed to stagnation and a one dimensional world. In turn, software creators are forced to live and operate in that one dimension, struggling to squeeze as much out of a box that they can.

As we've seen many times, underfunded projects are destined to die off. If hardware becomes free and available to all there's no profit. And where there's no profit there's no innovation; therefore, we will create our own stone age.

Peace

Good way to keep Linux off the desktop

[plazman30]

If you're given the hardware for free and be forced to buy a software subscription to Windows in order to GET the hardware, where does that leave Linux. Basically you will be forced to buy an OS you never plan to use. So we should say Gates and McNealy HOPE that hardware will be free, but I doubt we will ever get there.

Software subscriptions also insure constant revenues for software companies. Under the EULA, Office 2003 could just stop to work one day, because you only have a 2 year subscription.

The software subscription world sucks...

Andy

"Dumping" of hardware to keep a monopoly?

[ron_ivi]

" The government mandated it"

Interesting... In a way this sounds like "dumping" of a product to keep a monopoly, doesn't it?

Scarcity

[gilmet]

I'm not an economist, but, I always thought economics was about solving the problem of distributing scarce "goods". Hardware seems inherently scarce - limited by our production capacity and the scarcity of whatever physical components go into the hardware. Services, such as setting up a network or developing software are scarce - limited by the scarcity of the number of qualified people/things to deliver this service. But scarcity of software (and any kind of information: books, videos, music) AFTER it's been written is limited only by the communication channels through which the information is disseminated. Thanks to the internet, cost of dissemination is rapidly approaching zero.

So what's MY prediction? I predict you won't have to pay for software. I predict you will have to pay for hardware, although the cost of the hardware might be bundled into a service. I predict you will pay for the service of having software developed. So I'll subscribe to Joe's development studio, paying X bucks a month. And for that $X a month, I might get free hardware (or I'll buy my own), the latest version of every project Joe's studio is working on... oh, and 24/7 support. And if I ever decide to stop the service, I still get access to any build of any project that existed before my subscription ended. Yeah... that's how it will be.

Cars are free too!!!

[Zapdos]

Pay me $30,000 U.S. dollars a year for 4 tires, and I will throw in a free Dodge Neon every year.

Some restrictions apply.

FUD

[feloneous cat]

Before everyone begins to panic, remember that we ALL have the ability to create our own processors (through the miracle of VHDL). Lockdown, smockdown, we can create our OWN standards. If they don't like it, tough.

True, it means that more and more of us will have to depend on GPL'd code, but to be honest, I've gotten more value out of that than I have out of the big dollar code (although I must admit, I still while away a lot of time with GarageBand).

No, our hardware won't be as pretty, and maybe not as fast or cool, but it will be OUR hardware.

WE, are NOT dependent on Microsoft, or Sun, or Apple, or Dell, or AMD. It is not 1975 and more people know about the internals of microprocessors than they did in that long bygone era.

If we want to do a number on the computer industry, we would start using GPL'd hardware. THAT would scare them!

Feloneous

This is backwards.

[rice_burners_suck]

What kind of a retard thinks this kind of business model will work? Software is easy to copy. Punch in one command and it's done. But hardware is somewhat more difficult to copy. There ain't no command you can punch into DOS that will make a copy of your monitor.

I think there is an agenda behind this to wipe free software off the face of the Earth. They'll argue to Congress that free software allows people to pirate free hardware to the detriment of these companies, as if they have some God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and as if the government has some duty to protect that.

No. I have a very strong feeling that software will be free, NOT hardware, because software is information, which by its nature will spread, while hardware is made of physical tangible materials, which by their nature do not multiply. (I think there is some law of physics that prevents that from happening.) Gill Bates has it all back-ass-wards. (And his billions of dollars are a testament to that, by the way.)

In other news

[LPetrazickis]

(Reuters)

A leading bicycle manufacturer announced today that, in the future, bicycles will be free but people will have to pay for the oxygen they'd breathe while biking.

Advertisement:
[Kids, steal money from your parents and buy Nike brand oxygen. Only Nike oxygen delivers the charge you need to push the limit.]

This announcement follows a call by several right-wing thinktanks for a transition from a manufacture-based to a service-based economy.

A number of South American and African nations, who have finally developed a manufacturing sector of their own in spite of IMF loans going primarily to resource extraction are not expected to follow the advice in the near future.

Hysterical

[nexus987]

Has anyone checked out the price of sun hardware on sun's website recently? How come the E25k is still selling for 3.2 million dollars?!? Even their low end boxes like the sunblad 1500 are selling for $3000. Hellooooo?!?

Its about Control & Decay

[Linus Sixpack]

I think the argument (long term) has two basic tenants.

1) all the hardware sold will eventually break or lose its appeal.

2) at some stage central forces, controlled by the software corps, will be able to remove any competition on whatever is the dominant hardware.

So when your Pentium 7 is still running free software but you can't connect to anything and all your friends have gone over to the controlled Pentium 10 its not cool to be free. Cool beats freedom.

I'm hoping that international Standards keep enough teeth to insure interoperability. Lets hope companies like IBM & markets like China can stop too much centralization of power.

I think someone should quote Gandalf to Sun if it now thinks Microsoft is its ally:

"There is only one master of the ring, and he does not share power!"

Re:Somebody forgot to tell Dell!

[rifter]

Parent wrote: "Somebody forgot to tell Apple"

One more interesting thing about the "HW wants to be free" model is how it'll affect Dell, formerly a great MSFT ally.

I bet Michael Dell's not sleeping well if he's trying to sell commodity hardware that Balmer and McNeeley want to give away.

Not necessarily. After all even now companies like Dell make money selling Microsoft licenses. The best racket are the CALs since this is literally a license to print money. Dell will not give their hardware away for free. But if they get cut in on enough of the money from the Windows licenses, they will surely provide hardware in exchange for that.

Software should be free for personal use

[Stone316]

If you ask me, most, if not all software should be free for personal use. The big bucks are with support agreements and sales to corporations and government.

I like the way some vendors are moving, like Oracle. You can download all their software and experiment with it for personal use. Why do they do this? Because the more people in the workplace that are familiar with their products, the more it will be adopted.

Why don't more companies embrace this?

Re:A return to the old phone company

[Anonymous Coward]

The phone companies were charging a small fee every
month to 'rent' a phone, which over a period of many
years (the phones lasted forever) added up to thousands of dollars. You weren't allowed to actually buy a phone (which would have cost about
$100). The gov't. eventually stepped in, probably
at the urging of businesses who wanted to sell
new phones with more features.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[EisPick]

The monopoly mentality in hardware lived long past Western Electric's demise. I remember working at a convention in NYC in 1992. The convention contracted with NYNEX to supply telephones. The NYNEX/CWA phone techs broke the ends off the release tabs on the RJ-45 wiring after plugging them in, under the misconception that this would keep "civicians" from moving "their" telephones. Oh, and there really weren't proprietary connetors. While there was a big, clunky 4-prong plug for some phones, most were hard wired into the wall in those days. And those rental phones were built to last. Made of heavy Bakelite plastic (or something similar), they probably could survive a 30-foot drop. And if anything ever went bad, you just called for a free replacement.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[floatt]

It's still going on:

Apparently there are still at least a million phones being leased.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[CrimsonAvenger]

I seem to recall a time where you didn't own the telephone in your house either, but the phone company gave you one with your subscription. Anyone know how&why that model changed?

Antitrust action against AT&T

Bundling's a right old gimmick.

[mactari]

From the article, emphasis mine, of course...

Already, Sun offers a mid-range server for free to software developers provided they subscribe to bundled software and services offerings.

Schwartz isn't alone in saying that hardware will someday be "free," so long as customers sign up for multiyear software subscriptions and services contracts.

If I'm selling you two things, call them A and B, and it cost me 50 units of resources to build them, guess what? The price of A+B > 50 units every time -- or I go out of business.

A or B could be hardware, it could be subscription services, it could be maintenance, it could be anything. We could already say that Apple hardware is free, providing you're willing to pay a couple of thousand for the initial OS X install. It's all semantic gynastics. For heaven's sake folk, the hardware they speak of isn't free. Everyone knows that. No more free than the lenses I got with my glasses frames or the DVD of the Patriots I got with Sports Illustrated.

And *of course* OS makers would prefer you ignored hardware -- and more importantly prefer hardware mfgs become even more beholden to OS makers for their dime. If you think HP/Dell/etc was in MS's pocket a few years ago... sheesh.

So just remember, the price of A+B will always be greater than their combined cost to create. As long as someone bundles, what difference does it make? The profit the hardware makers used to derive directly from you would now come from MS or Sun for each unit sold. Wow. How inventive and out of the box. Let's sound like we're moving the company at light speed, helped by the fact that we're travelling in MS's wake now, and hope it helps people ignore that, "Since the dot-com and telecommunications bubbles burst, Sun has posted a string of quarterly losses and declining revenue as its core customer industries - telecommunications and financial services - suffered."

And, of course, it's almost too obvious to bother pointing out that your "free hardware" will [typically] be bottom of the line jive. Upgrade to Office 2015? Well, it doesn't even pretend to run on your Office 2012 hardware. Want to play DOOM 5? Well, you're still shelling out -- that'll never run on the hardware you get bundled with Office today -- unless you sign up for a pretty danged shackling agreement. The more I learn about corporations' planned tomorrow, the safer I feel it to assume I'll be using Linux when I get there.

It's about "what is possible to own?"

[SlideGuitar]

Microsoft/Sun is betting that the future of ownership lies in the realm of "ideas on paper", and not in the realm of "ideas expressed in metal and silicon", much less in the realm of plain old physical stuff, which is the only area that ownership should be meaningful.

It's an interesting claim.... building the structure of ownership from "stuff" out into the abstract realm of ideas.

If they can get away with it, they are golden and you and I are so, so screwed.

It's no exageration to say that the future of humanity and human freedom is at stake. If ideas can be owned in perpetuity, given the viral nature of ideas, ultimately we have a condition of complete ownership of your brain by large corporations.

If ideas are owned, someday every idea you have learned will have been learned from a textbook or cultural source that someone had an intellectual property interest in. You literally will not own the thoughts in your own head.

It is an amazing fascistic vision that these folks are promoting. It is hard to see where it will end, given that the issue is difficult for ordinary law makers and citizens to grasp, and given the fact that MS already has its foot in the door with billions to spend to promote this idea.

Makes sense..

[naelurec]

...if your Microsoft.

Take a look at Windows 98 .. [URL="http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html"] According to Google[/URL], 21% of users are running Windows 98, a 6 year old OS which while it doesn't run the latest MS (W2K+) software, is still being used day in and day out by millions and millions of people.

Historically Microsoft could get 3-4 year cycles .. People running Win98 by and large tend to be happy with their systems and generally only upgrade (atleast in my experience) due to hardware failure or incompatibility with some current must-have-software.

Microsoft takes a look at the media giants, looks at internet providers, looks at phone companies, cell phone companies, etc..etc.. All of these have people paying out $40+ a month without a flinch. $40 a month x a 3 year contract is $1440. If your Microsoft, that looks a heck of a lot better than that same individual paying for a $500 box and well .. umm.. thats it.

Not only can they get the monthly revenue stream, but they won't technically have to "innovate" nearly as hard .. people will grow accustomed to paying and just accept it as another media/telecom cost.

If I was Microsoft, I'd want to achieve this business model as well.. reduced R&D, consistent monthly income, total lockin and piece-of-cake to restrict (DRM and so forth)

Of course, initially this platform will be pretty cool.. I wouldn't be surprised if the broadband companies are the ones who actually do the install.

Get your highspeed internet, pay another $50 or so a month, get the computer which has access to the online music store and other exclusive online content (of course the music store would only play on the computer.. burning to CD or so forth would be extra) plus the standard set of Microsoft software.

Perhaps MS would even setup the box in such a way where documents and all that are stored online in a "trusted" passport account or similar. Then they can tout ease of use! "Have a problem with the system? Hit the "restore" button on the front and it will reload everything from a disk image! All your documents are safely stored online!" -- I dunno, to the masses who have pounded their head against data loss and doing everything by themselves, that might sound rather appealing .. heck its only $50/mo and you get the free computer!

yikes.

Apple's share of the desktop market.

[hearingaid]

Apple invented the desktop market. The Apple ][ was the first mass-market desktop. There wasn't one before, unless you count some CP/M machines - but I don't. Flip back to 1981, and you're looking at Apple everywhere in the micro world.

Then, the introduction of the Macintosh. The Mac dominated business for several years after its introduction. It wasn't really until the late 80s, when clones started becoming common, that it lost its edge; remember, Apple was cheaper than IBM way back then.

Re:Apple's share of the desktop market.

[jkabbe]

Clones may not have been commonplace in business until the late 1980's. But as early as 1984 (when we bought ours) they were available and very inexpensive (compared to IBM and Apple). It probably just took a few years for people to come to grips with the idea of 100% compatibility. Rest assured, though, clones were around when Apple launched the Mac.

Terrific!

[NerveGas]

Billy-boy can give me one of those dual-core Longhorn-capable machines for free, and Sun can give me a nifty SPARC-powered machine for free.

Then I'll install Linux on them, and forgo the software rental fees.

steve

Why "free hardware" won't work.

[tmoertel]

There are two fundamental problems with the notion that what customers really want are solutions in which hardware is a commoditized good.

First, hardware does cost money. It isn't free, and Sun is not particularly efficient at making it. Put simply, Sun isn't ever going to be able to compete with Dell, which will crank out perfectly good boxes at prices that Sun can't touch. Even if Sun hides these extra costs in "solution fees," those costs are real and must be passed on to customers. Therefore, other vendors can undercut Sun's pricing by offering equivalent solutions in which Sun hardware has been replaced by Dell hardware.

Second, the price that the market is willing to pay for software is rapidly decreasing, courtesy of Free software. Ultimately, the price that Microsoft and Sun can charge for their software, however well hidden, is not equivalent to the net benefit that their software provides. Rather, they can charge only for the net additional benefit that their software provides beyond what is already available as Free software. In other words, if the market can have functionality J for free, and Microsoft and Sun offer functionality J+K in their solutions, the market will only be willing to pay for K. As Free software incorporates more functionality, J gets larger and K gets smaller, and hence Microsoft and Sun's pricing power diminishes. Thus, as free software improves other vendors will be able to undercut Microsoft and Sun by offering equivalent solutions in which the proprietary software has been replaced by Free software.

The bottom line is that a solution is hardware plus software plus services. Take any solution which involves Sun, and you can undercut it by replacing Sun with Dell. Take any solution which involves Microsoft, and you can undercut it by replacing Microsoft software with Free software.

I'm going to enjoy watching this play out in the market.

Marketing Trick

[BrianMarshall]

Which statement is likely to be a trick?

• I have this software - anyone who wants it can have it for free.
• I can provide hardware - anyone who wants it can have it for free.

The incremental cost of letting one more person use your software is zero (basically); the incremental cost of building someone some hardware is not zero.

Count down to Asian Tea Party

[properler]

So Scott and Bill got in bed together to lock computers with DRM. Kiss of death for Sun. News at eleven.

But this schems works if everyone follows. Microsoft can try. XBox are not servers. MS easily can lock them, locked servers are next to useless.

Problem with that DRM game is that China and India won't follow. China is starting boiling its own standards to avoid American patents. Smart ass analysts say "fragmenting the market is dangerous". Well, a potential market of 1.2 billions people with two main languages is not that fragmented. Someone should tell this guys from Big Apple that there is something south of the Statue of Liberty!

Oh, and most of manufacturing is in Asia. America is working hard so that support and engineering will soon be there too. Europe will probably do the same. :(

Now about content.
Bill and Scott think the real value is software and content (music, movies). Problem is that Asia and easter Europe is starting to be good there to. Interesting that Tarentino movie blinks at asiatic movies. At least he is aware, that the strength of america is to be a melting pot. America can lock itself in DRM and get its culture even more inbred than it has recently become. Choice: Oprah or Jerry Springer?

Now about software and service. IBM is using Open Source, Oracle is training ist workforce to Linux. Who needs Sun which tries to force on us its own stuff? Who want slowlaris anyway?

Remember the Boston Tea Party. The asians can start their Asian Tea Party. any day know.

Short of nuking them, America will have to rebuild know how, industries... Who knows? America becoming a poor country, some day some morons from Asia will think smart to oursource in America. And leadership will change again.

A few years back, I was asking myself "will this end up with an asian Tea party". Now, I just ask myself when. I even hope that Europe will evneutally get smart. But we have just voted stupid patent laws for software. :( Empires come and goes. Europe should be smart not to stay the vassal of the states.

Microsoft will tell...

[sterno]

The answer to your question is that Microsoft will set that for the industry. Going from their history, based on the Office licensing model, it sounds like you'll not be locked in per se, but you'll be penalized for not sticking with them. Not precisely a lock in, but just a strong incentive to stick with them.

As far as Sun goes, they won't be around to see it. Name me one software product that Sun has that you'd be willing to subscribe to get access to. Go on... I'm waiting...

This is all just Sun's line for the investors, buying time til their inevitable demise. Their hardware is being outpaced by IBM, they can't come close to IBM in professional services, and Microsoft dominates in the software arena.

Expect Intel/AMD boxes running Linux to continue to dissolve Sun's hardware margins, and Microsoft will prevent them from getting any kind of foot hold in software. Unless they completely re-invent themselves, they aren't going to be around for much longer.

So let me get this straight . . .

[A.T. Hun]

Free hardware is Good For America as opposed to free software which is Bad For America. It all makes perfect sense! (at least once you substitute "Sun" or "Microsoft" for "America")

Re:A return to the old phone company

[pdbaby]

That model still exists here in the UK -- although it's probably not very popular. My mother's a doctor and she has one corded phone that's provided by the phone company; the benefit for her is that if her phone &/ line breaks the company come around and fix it much faster (or so it appears)

Sun and MS are software companies

[nuggz]

Sun and MS are software companies, obviously they will tell everyone the future is in software, not hardware.

MS is obviously a software company.
Sun wants to be a hardware company, but they are realizing they can't compete with the price performance of commodity x86 boxes.

What about Tivo?

[DukeyToo]

There are 2 styles of subscriptions in the world today. The first is the "lease" style - you get a product for a low ongoing cost, and at the end of some period you own the product, or can trade it in for the next product version. During the lease, the product features remain static, and the value of the product decreases.

The second style is the "rent" style, you pay a fixed price for as long as you want to keep the product. Occasionally, the product may be upgraded (e.g. an apartment complex may install new energy efficient windows). When you no longer want the product, then you stop paying (although usually you have to commit to a period).

Given that software manufacturers want software subscriptions, which model do you think they prefer? Lets try and find some current examples...

Why do people lease cars? Because the prices are exhorbitant. Why would people lease a hardware and software combination? Is the price of those 2 combined exhorbitant? Are there any examples out there already?

What about Tivo? Combined software and hardware, together for a particular purpose, with a monthly subscription and a low initial cost. People are quite happy to pay a monthly subscription, even though the software remains static. This is not the "lease" style, it is the "rent" style. So, given that established corporations are spectacularly non-original entities, there is little likelihood that they will go for the lease style of subscriptions.

Given that, and using Tivo as a reference, what can we deduce? The hardware need not be upgradeable, and the software need only support a very limited capability to upgrade. In addition, the user will have little or no ability to alter or substitute the software themselves. Finally, the hardware/software unit will perform limited, specific functionality.

Perhaps it will be an "office" machine, with a word processor and a spreadsheet. Or a travel machine, or even a remote desktop machine, with no functionality of its own.

I am not entirely clear what Sun seeks to gain. Will corporations rent server appliances? Do they now? I don't know. Microsoft's focus is more obvious, since they have traditionally worked on the "client" side of things.

With regard to DRM, in the PC appliance world, it is a non-issue. If the appliance has no place for
an analogue output, and the software is not accessible, then the user has no way to access the content, except through the appliance.

What about taxes and depreciation?

[lawyer boy]

I may be a lawyer, but IANAA (I am not an accountant). As best I can tell, depreciation is limited to tangible property (not software). There are two general classes of depreciable assets:

(1) Personalty - Tangible property other than land, buildings, or permanent additions or components of buildings.

and

(2) Realty - Tangible property that is either land, buildings, or permanent additions or components of buildings.

I don't see how software could be included in either of these categories, but obviously hardware would be considered Personalty (I checked MACRS and found that computers are given a 5 year depreciation schedule).

Any CPAs out there care to comment on whether software is eligible for depreciation and, if not, how important this would be for business planners?

free

[trustedserf]

if i use ( freeBSD | linux ) on the desktop, and am happy with a PII, then my hardware is already ~free. so is my software. in the future i can look forward to free hardware and paid-for software?

that's not an improvement.

i suspect (hope) that in time both will be freee, or rather, software free, and usable hardware very cheap. of course, if you want cutting edge so you can have transparency and 3d windows and ..., well, that's fine too.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[Eraser_]

Minor point, but I thought it was 2-pair RJ-11 that we have now? With RJ-45 being the 4-pair ethernet style adapter?

why sun is stupid

[flacco]

they are not going to turn around the F/free commodity software on cheap(er) hardware trend, period.

if they had any sense they'd be positioning themselves to provide services and software further up the software stack, above the commodity level. unfortunately, they have no sense.

Apple model?

[SuperKendall]

You use the term "Apple model" seemingly without understanding what the "Apple model" really is.

Let me describe it to you - the "Apple model" is a somewhat expensive but pleasant merry-go-round ride - if at any point you get tired of the opulance, you are free to return to the litter-strewn streets of reality.

Example. The hardware is all standard. It has a PCI bus, uses pretty standard memory, uses standard USB/Firewire periphrials. If I tire of OS X for some reason, I can in fact leave anytime I like and run Linux on it. The box is not locked down that way at all - and I am not force to buy Apple hardware for expansion in any way. In a "Console model' which is what you were suggesting, everything is custom - like the non-standard USB ports on an XBox (interestingly the standard USB ports on the PS2 are one reason I chose that platform originally, so I could use a normal keyboard/mouse with it, so there can be exceptions).

Second Example. Apple software. If you use iTunes, you can at any time burn any protected songs to CD (or in reality juust use HYMN to deprotect them) and step off the merry-go-round. If you use iPhoto it keeps all of your photos in real files in a subdirectory, not some custom database - super easy to stop using and move all the files elsewhere, even files from a user-defined category. If you use iMovie all of your clips are bog standard video files that anything else can use. In all cases if you tire of the convience offered or outgrow the system (as many serious photographers do with iPhoto), you are free to move on.

We should all pray that the industry adopts the "Apple standard" as you put it, instead of ridiculing this very consumer-friendly approach. I think you were right about attempts to "consolize" the PC market though, it's just that you started out with an unnessicary and incorrect dig at Apple, who is trying to help you. When they do "consoleize" all other PC's with trusted BIOSes, you know where you can turn to...

I also worry about the attempt to make everything you do work by rental. But I don't think customers will stand for it, so I think they can only take the thing so far before customers use non-rental alternatives instead. Look at how popular pay-as-you go cell phone plans are becoming, I know a number of people who have gone that way.

Hasn't this already happened

[jethro200]

with cell phones? You pay for the service, get a 2 year contract, and get your phone for hundreds of dollars less than you would pay for it alone.

Hard wired

[zogger]

--the earliest phones I remember as a kid where hard wired, no jack at all, and they didn't have a dial. Heavy suckers. One of my grandmas had one of the old crank phones, where the mouth piece was on the phone on the wall, you grabbed the single earphone and held it up to your ear, and you cranked it to get the operators attention. We had a normal looking phone though, just no dial. You just picked up the phone, if someone was yakking on it (no one had a dedicated phone, they were all party lines with like 6 houses on each circuit) you asked when they would be done. You picked up a few minutes later, and the operator came on, you gave her-and it always was a her- a number, or just told her a name if it was local. Payphones had dials and cost a nickle. Hardly anyone had a TV yet(we were the first in the neighborhood to get one), but everyone had a big ole tube job radio in the living room and some sort of record player. Those radios threw more heat then the next 10 AMD boxes put together. Smokin! They'd pull the stations though, almost all of them had built in shortwave and commercial AM, there wasn't any FM yet. Not that I remember anyway. I LOVED them things. Had a big ole grundig was my gateway to the world at night, had wires all over my ceiling in my room.

And movies were 25 cents and the only place that had air conditioning. Cokes were a nickle. A new .22 rifle was around 12$. A one speed old heavy bike was about 25$, had enough steel in it to build two harleys I think. Not sure on new car prices back then other than below one grand for a decent one. I know the first house we lived in cost my dad 100$ downpayment, and it was brand spanking new, 3 bedroom ranch with a nice yard in a nice neighborhood. He had a ten year mortgage (I asked him later to find out), which was very common then.

Re:Hard wired

[zogger]

Got my tech enthusiasm from my dad, who was a radio/radar tech in the navy in ww2, then went on to be a mr fixit guy for them things back in civvie life, then went on to work in mainframes. I got to see and help work (some, mostly astanding around getting in the way) on some really old full building sized monsters way back then. He's retired now, but is still a mad garage inventor/tinkerer. Heh, he used to be a "case modder". This is funny. All the old radios and tvs he worked on for people, he would throw a fan in there mounted inside a coffee can, they kept the machines cooler, the tubes went out less often=happier customers, more word of mouth business for him. Another time he built his own electric guitar and amp and had a small band he played in, mostly what is called rockabilly now styled music. My mom jammed on keyboards-a real piano. Heh. They also really encouraged me, were good parents, I learned to read at age 4, that certainly helped.

I'm red-green deficient color blind unfortunately, so back then I really couldn't get into electronics much from color coded wires and resistors, etc, much to my regret to this day. I can tinker some with electronics now, but it's just strictly amatuer hour there. I'm a fair mechanic/carpenter and have had quite an amazing variety of jobs and experiences. To me, life is a great adventure, if you ain't having fun and learning, you'll just shrivel up and get sour. Ya gotta stay physically and mentally active. I always liked computers, but never afforded one until the early 90s when they finally got cheap enough for me to get good used ones. Now it's just a hobby and a great commo tool, an adjunct to radios. Hmm, another thing my old man made was really spiffy, back in the late 60's we had a big backyard pool, the last couple years I was living at home. He and I installed a home brew solar water heating system for that pool, we picked up two more months of good swimming with that thing (up in michigan where I grew up). He was always making stuff like that. Another one I remember he made a capacitive discharge ignition system for those old 59 chevy wagon he had. It was a bear to start in cold weather, he built this thing one weekened and poof, that car just CRANKED and ran no matter how cold it got.

Lots of older folks are tech savvy, remember, all the tech we have today came from guys like my dad back then doing the ground work. 50 years from now you'll look back and go "man, that was some primitive stuff back then in 2004!" HAHAHA!

ipods! We didn't have no steenking ipods! I had a crystal radio I made. The potential between the antenna and the ground wire made the juice to run it. The tuner was wire wrapped on a carboard tube, the ear phone was a rubber eraser with a needle in it and some bits of plastic crap. the whole thing was mounted in a cigar box. Wish I still had it.. hmm Dang if I could remember it better I'd describe it better, but that was most of it AFAIK. It actually worked, with a lot of fussing you could get a couple of stations. Nuthing like that grundig though, I STILL don't have a radio that could pull the stations that old analog monster could.

some stuff was cooler back then, some stuff is cooler now, it's a fair trade off I guess. *Much* less crime, and your buck was worth a lot more, and wicked easy to find good work, and things you could get were mostly still cheap, and quality was excellent. Now you have a lot more variety of *things*, but they don't last as long. Stuff all costs too much, which they keep trying to fix by inflating the dollar, but it still hasn't worked. We got a lot more white collar businessmen/bosses/mamagers/ whatever per human than we used to. And the economy got worse. Politicians still suck. I think they always have sucked, because it's a sucky job probably. Corporations are even more bogus, but they bring us cool stuff, so we are stuck with them, that'll be the fight that lasts forever. We have much better information now, you can go find out about ANYTHING you want to sitting in your living room, this is WAY cool.

Still, no cheap flying cars, and no hot babe amazon robots for your private army.... I'm HOLDING OUT!

I got one word for you

[dnoyeb]

DIVX... (the rental movie player scheme not the codec)

I think they are forgeting that people will pay for freedom. If your 'free' hardware makes me a slave to your foolish whims, i'll gladly buy my way our of it.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[Smallpond]

Carterphone sued to be able to connect customer-owned equipment to the telephone network. Once that sailed through the courts (heh) the market was opened up for cheap phone equipment.

open source software

[dekeji]

Reuters quotes Schwartz: 'In our world, you will subscribe to the software and the hardware is free.'

Note that you subscribe "to the software", not maintenance or documentation or training.

I think this tells you pretty much what Sun thinks about open source software and how they are using it. As if you needed any other indication after they went back on their promise of ANSI/ISO standardization of Java, hijacked the Gnome desktop with proprietary components, and are generally badmouthing Linux and open source to their customers. And keep in mind that this is the company that started out by turning BSD UNIX into a highly proprietary system.

No such thing as free hardware

[gad_zuki!]

>something akin to the cell phone market

Exactly. That's the model that would work best. Why should I let some other company steal my hardware and my customers? How will I get capital to even build out my devices if I can't convince my investors that I can't even protect my own product or have any kind of customer loyalty?

There's no such thing as "free" hardware, its subsidized hardware. Subsidized hardware means DRM, patents, proprietary tech, etc.

If we truly shift to an age of free stuff, it will also be an age of contracts and we all know how wonderful it is to be stuck with one carrier, their support, their devices, etc. Think Microsoft times ten. No wonder Bill is all for it.

In the end, I doubt it going to happen as predicted. MSN did their "take 300 dollars off a PC at best buy if you sign a contract with us" and a lot of people got burned paying broadband rates for dial-up and vendor lock-in. Not to mention the demographic you're going for at first doesn't have credit. On top of it, the cheap thin client or appliance PC has been a market disaster thus far.

Not so long ago...

[WebCowboy]

(this opst ain't ALL off-topic, I'll make a point at the end)

You just picked up the phone, if someone was yakking on it (no one had a dedicated phone, they were all party lines with like 6 houses on each circuit) you asked when they would be done. ...

I'm quite young (almost 30 years old) and the above was the case in *my* lifetime! Of course I was also born and raised in a rural area of Canada (and yes, many rural parts of the US were just as "backwards" or more so in the 70's and early 80's). We had a colour TV thoughan horrid inflation in the 70s and early 80's made everything a bit more expensive.

When I was a wee lad my early experiences with the phone were quite similar. We had a clunky rotary-dial phone (didn't need operator assistance of course). All the lines on our local exchange outside the town limits were shared by two to six people. Touch-tone phones could not be used to dial out (although you could use one as an extension once the call was conencted or to spy on the neighbours when they were talking). Not only did you not have to dial the area code for any local calls as you have to do in some cases today, you didn't even have to dial the exchange code if you were on a common exchange! You just dialled the last four digits to connect if you were both on the same exchange(if your number was 555-1234 and you wanted to call 555-4321 all you did was dial 4321--If you wanted to call 321-5555 you'd need to dial the whole thing).

RJ11 or those wonky 4-prong connectors existed, but it was still common for the phone to be HARD-WIRED to the wall! You still couldn't buy your own phone or even add an extension in your own house without the government telephone company's involvement and extra charges. That was the case for everyone, not just in the country either. You couldn't even get your own line, much less a second one or even a second number no matter that you were willing to pay.

That all started to change in about 1985. Rural residents finally got touch-tone dialling and a dedicated (non-party) line (although each residence had to pay a few hundred dollars to get the line). We also were given ownership of the lines within our homes (at no cost) so we could do our own wiring and add extensions at no cost. We were no longer forced to rent phones and were allowed to purchase our own. And we were officially allowed to use answering machines and computer modems (finally--they were not allowed on party lines although they would technically function to some degree)!

As time went on, the government telephone company was privatised and we could buy long distance from competitors. There have been downsides (local company customer service stinks even worse than it used to) but overall the upsides are much greater (waaaay cheaper long distance, no party line, more flexible options, more features like call waiting and so on). In less than 20 years the difference is extremely dramatic!

This all looks like the reverse of the Sun/Microsoft vision actually. Some compare it to cellphones but I think of it more as the way government owned telephone system worked pre-1985 where I live--which is even worse. The parallels are there:

* Computers will be "free" (but neither in the "gratis" OR "libre" sense--it'll be no money up front but the "rental fee" will be mandatory or built into your monthly bill for service). Just like when you couldn't actually OWN your phone. At least you have SOME choices with cellphones.

* Technicians will come to your home and set everything up for you. Really convenient, but when you try to set up a second computer on your own (if you could even obtain one on your own) or alter your existing PC you'd be breaking your service contract, not only causing you to be fined but maybe you'd lose internet access or even the entire PC! (kinda like if you tried to add an extension or use an answering machine and got into trouble). Can you imagine... "we have evidence that you've connected an unaut

Re:Not so long ago...

[zogger]

Yes, the phone companies were SUCH rip, that's why they finally got busted up. Long distance was obscene expensive. And that thing with the one phone, yes, and I remember a lot of guys just hard wired in their own phone extensions, using old surplus stuff they got from someplace. You kept it hidden though, like under the bed. Sorta like modding satellite now or something like that. When business won't give ya what ya want, you DIY. It was ridiculous. And the music and movie industry was still a monopoly and charged out the wazoo for "copies". That hasn't changed one bit. They have consistantly maintained every new generation of technology would "put them out of business". What a crock.

But, I bet you had great fishing and hunting, yes? and a big garden slam fulla great chow every summer? Living rural was always great, IMO, still is.

This is silly for one reason...

[beakburke]

Hardware has a marginal cost to make that is far from zero, and software doesn't. Thus even if hardware becomes commoditized, which it pretty much is in the PC world, It still isn't ever free (not for real). Software, OTOH, essentially has a marginal cost of zero. Thus it makes more sense for a company to sell hardware and give away software that adds value to the product than to do it the other way around. They want to spread the fixed software costs over a lot of hardware units. Thus one makes (or utilizes open source) software to make their hardware more valuable to the end user.

by that thinking why TV's should be free

[wtoconnor]

By their thinking TV's should be free but they are not. Why can't I just signup for that Cable Infomercial channel and get my TV for free. Because no one would do it. The content would be crap and I would not have the option to go to different vendor easily. When they say free they mean you signup for a 2 year subscription like the cell phone companies offer and pay for the software. But you are actually paying for both regardless. The software makers want you to think that software is the only thing of value.