[kwlug-disc] How Canonical makes money ...

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

The funny/sad part is that these proprietary applications already support
multiple platforms that are really different, e.g. Windows, Linux, FreeBSD,
NetBSD, IBM AIX, HP/UX, ...etc., let alone different processor
architectures, filesystems (or raw partitions), ...etc.

The effort supporting different Linux distros is there (packaging, ...etc.),
but has to be far less than supporting the differences between (say) BSD and
Linux.

I think at least one issue is the corporate mentality of "we don't want to
be sued", when they say "we support platform X". It is easier for them to
say "we only support X and Y, nothing else", rather than do like open source
products (MySQL, Apache, PHP) do "hey, here are the binaries/debs/rpms,
download them and use them with the usual disclaimers".

Of course, being open source means that someone will scratch their own itch
and fix the packaging if it is broken, and that it will make it to the
repositories of the distro as well, so it is available for everyone.

So, open source here has an edge ... the power and scale of a community ...
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
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