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Linspire CEO Considers CNR for Ubuntu
bored2k writes "Kevin Carmony, President and CEO of Linspire, Inc., is using the Ubuntu Forums to ask for input and explain why he thinks a popular and heavily focused on usability distribution like Ubuntu needs Linspire's $20 per-year CNR service. From what he says, both him and Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical/Ubuntu's founder) like the idea. Would CNR honestly help Ubuntu grow, or is it just a scheme to cash in on it's success?"
Nonsense. Ubuntu is free, and will always be free. Their principles state that there can't be "extra" versions that cost money in addition to the free version, too. CNR is nice, but it's not Ubuntu.
And would it have killed you to throw in some mention of what the hell a "CNR" is?
No! You will never stop me from "compiling linux tar file"! (Google "Lindows Rock")
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
What I want to know is why Sun doesn't get together with the Ubuntu team to create a package for the new JDK 1.5. They have a binary installer for Linux, why not have a '.deb' file for Ubuntu? It's free, you just have to click-through Sun's license to get it...
There are som things open source just cant supply legally. MP3, WMA, and some other media formats are amongst those. To be able to get those from CNR would be wonderful. CNR can license those things in another way than an open source dist can. It would be a nice complement and make it easier for the users.
HTTP/1.1 400
apt-get is darned easy to use, but there are many things available through CNR that aren't in the apt repositories. It is certainly a nice supplement.
Look at it this way; it is optional. If you don't want it, you are in exactly the same situation as before. If you do want it, you get something extra. It is a win-win situation; you either ignore it, or benefit from it.
> "Would CNR honestly help Ubuntu grow, or is it just a scheme to cash in on it's success?"
:)
Why can't it be both? Sheesh, you guys are so narrow minded!
I have zero personal interest in this, even though I like Ubuntu, but I can imagine many people who might find it useful.
One thing that I would be interested to see is if they can make CNR work (for its target audience) without Linspire's terrible always-run-as-root misfeature.
However, there is no reason why Ubuntu could not host Digitally Signed Shell Scripts ( DSSS ) on their website, and by default, include a MIME setting so that web-browsers will pass the script along to a plugin that checks that it has been signed by Ubuntu before executing the shell script. The script would then perform the one click download and install of the required software. The advantage of this is that the DSSS could be linked to by any Ubuntu website, FAQ , help, page etc.
Two precondition:
1) Ubuntu should not preselect any one service over another, but include scripts to install competeing services.
2) Any Ubuntu "affiliated service" that wants a Ubuntu DSSS would be required to sign an agreement to not use it to install any badware.
A quick and easy way to get licensed software (for a fee of course) without having to spend hours looking for unofficial versions. I'd go for it, if the price is right.
Well, that might be beacuse IT IS an African distro and a word in Zulu. As far as i know it was meant as its main goal to be a distro for Africans and the general popularity is just an added bonus. OSS tends to have silly sounding names in general. Ubuntu, other than sounding silly to someone unfamiliar with it also expresses the ideology behind the foundation.
I have mixed feelings about something like CNR, and perhaps it's because I don't fully understand it.
My impression is that it's like one-click shopping for sofware. Find software on a web browser, push a button, it gets installed, and you get billed. I guess that's ok, for someone who feels a little scared to type "emerge doom3". But that's not what I'd really like to get out of something like CNR.
First off, I like the idea of a subscription service. In these days of security issues, it's downright stupid to adopt a sales-without-service model for computers. Any computer which will be connected to a network needs some form of regular service plan. My mom's system runs "emerge sync" weekly, "glsa-check" nightly, and emails the results to me. Even if glsa-check is only tied into the portage database, and thus only does something new weekly, at least the nightly emails will nag me into taking care of it. When there's a security issue, I ssh in and fix it. When I visit, I bring her system fully up to date. That's a "policy."
I'd like to see some sort of update/security policy out of a service like CNR. In particular, something like emerge is very good about upgrading packages and identifying config files that may require updating. But it doesn't update them, it just tells you that it needs to be done. IMHO, THIS is where the real effort needs to be in a subscription service, in tweaking configuration files after update, yet not breaking the system.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Computer, User or household...
I have six Ubuntu boxes at home, would I be expected to pay $120 per year or would I be able to get away with just the one CNR subscription for the household?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
CNR for $20 / year for outdated software.
Or I can use Klik for free, which does the same thing, is constantly up to date, and is guarenteed to never interfere with my system since all the packages are installed in theor own chroot directories.
Why doesn't Ubunto adopt Klik? Is it just not as well known?
What would be at best to do then, is to port concepts of CNR into Synaptic or other such interface. What Carmony doesnt understand is , how can you do this without charging money, which is his ultimate aim. This is not whole disimiliar to Apple's woes about releasing some of its code to the Open source community (rightly so, OSx86 popped up pretty quick). If Carmony released CNR code to the FOSS community, Id back him. But not at a charge to his benefit. KingBahamut, Ubuntuforums.org
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
What part of Yiddish do you consider "Western Culture" ? While there's been a minority of Jiddish-speaking people in "the West" for quite a few centuries, it's still a minority.
Or did you mean that while there's a Yiddish word that is similar in meaning to Ubuntu, and you couldn't find a word in English or another big European language, that doesn't matter, because Jesus talked a lot about how nice it'd be if we could all just get along?
At any rate I agree that gp's implied characterisation of "Western Culture" as being " fundemantally exclusive" might be a bit harsh. But it's been common practice to assume that corporate and capitalistic ideals (competiton, focus on improving your own situation at all costs) are the same ideals most people hold close to their heart in "the West". I think it's simplistic, and wrong. It's certainly hard to explain the success of movements such as GNU/FSF, and the relatively strong welfare states that exist in most of Europe from this perspective.