I might be missing something obvious here, so apologies if that's the case - but I've never understood what gives the BSA the right to walk into your office and demand to see your licenses? Is it embedded in an EULA somewhere, because I thought even the police were supposed to need a warrant to get into your office...
Fair enough - that does make sense. Although the thought I got from his answer on that particular one was that they plan to attribute the payment required for their binary packages to the fact that they supply a guarantee/certification with them. If they didn't do that, I wouldn't believe him either but in the world we live in I suppose it's all too realistic to expect someone to jump up and down and sue for whatever figure they can dream up should they discover a bug that causes them to have to download a patch and lose 20 minutes of their time...
Maybe I'm missing something here, but the answers above don't seem to bear any resemblance to obfuscation at all. The case he represents makes perfectly valid business sense - they're not distributing normal free binaries because they're basing a large part of their business on selling people discs with binaries on it that are guaranteed to work. What they're selling people is that guarantee - and the work that's gone into the verification and compatability testing/development.
I don't see where you get that there's anything wrong with this... if they were selling to companies the binaries that you and I normally download, then prohibiting re-distribution, then we would have a legitimate beef. And the entire argument about "anti-hippy" and not respecting the community, is in my opinion - no offence - bollocks.
The issue is that big companies buying servers and server OS' have to be able to say to the decision makers that a) we're buying something that is certified to run with the other stuff we have and b) come with full support and maintenance package. It's another way of representing a linux distribution company in a more corporate packaged way - which is what appeals to corporates.
I love the linux and opensource communities, and I prefer their ideals to any other in the industry. But I don't care what anyone says - the vast majority of major corporates who are going to buy server OS' will balk at buying anything that isn't fully guaranteed and warranteed and professionally supported. Nobody at the top of those chains gives a toss about the community benefit or anti-microsoft ideals or even security in some cases.
From the limited amount available to read about it, and the above answers, it at least seems as though UL are heading in the right direction for business. At the end of the day, they've guaranteed that any innovations or enhancements will be passed on to the community for free, and they're not going to force you to buy their distro, so what does it matter. Calling the guy a liar or untrustworthy just because he's finding a way to build a good business from linux distributions is insane - it's exactly this kind of thing we need if we're ever to get Linux over the acceptance hurdles it currently faces...
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I might be missing something obvious here, so apologies if that's the case - but I've never understood what gives the BSA the right to walk into your office and demand to see your licenses? Is it embedded in an EULA somewhere, because I thought even the police were supposed to need a warrant to get into your office...
Fair enough - that does make sense. Although the thought I got from his answer on that particular one was that they plan to attribute the payment required for their binary packages to the fact that they supply a guarantee/certification with them. If they didn't do that, I wouldn't believe him either but in the world we live in I suppose it's all too realistic to expect someone to jump up and down and sue for whatever figure they can dream up should they discover a bug that causes them to have to download a patch and lose 20 minutes of their time...
Maybe I'm missing something here, but the answers above don't seem to bear any resemblance to obfuscation at all. The case he represents makes perfectly valid business sense - they're not distributing normal free binaries because they're basing a large part of their business on selling people discs with binaries on it that are guaranteed to work. What they're selling people is that guarantee - and the work that's gone into the verification and compatability testing/development.
.02
I don't see where you get that there's anything wrong with this... if they were selling to companies the binaries that you and I normally download, then prohibiting re-distribution, then we would have a legitimate beef. And the entire argument about "anti-hippy" and not respecting the community, is in my opinion - no offence - bollocks.
The issue is that big companies buying servers and server OS' have to be able to say to the decision makers that a) we're buying something that is certified to run with the other stuff we have and b) come with full support and maintenance package. It's another way of representing a linux distribution company in a more corporate packaged way - which is what appeals to corporates.
I love the linux and opensource communities, and I prefer their ideals to any other in the industry. But I don't care what anyone says - the vast majority of major corporates who are going to buy server OS' will balk at buying anything that isn't fully guaranteed and warranteed and professionally supported. Nobody at the top of those chains gives a toss about the community benefit or anti-microsoft ideals or even security in some cases.
From the limited amount available to read about it, and the above answers, it at least seems as though UL are heading in the right direction for business. At the end of the day, they've guaranteed that any innovations or enhancements will be passed on to the community for free, and they're not going to force you to buy their distro, so what does it matter. Calling the guy a liar or untrustworthy just because he's finding a way to build a good business from linux distributions is insane - it's exactly this kind of thing we need if we're ever to get Linux over the acceptance hurdles it currently faces...
Just my