[wellylug] Linuxant gone commercial!!!

[Rob Stockley]

On Fri, 2003-10-31 at 05:33, Jethro Carr wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 09:18, Peter Jones wrote: 
> > They (Linuxant) put up a page saying why they are charging
> > https://www.linuxant.com/store/faq.php
> >  
> > On the whole I think its pretty reasonable.  People like to eat, and
> > that costs.
> >  
> > Why is it that paying for hardware is the most acceptable thing in
> > the world, but paying for software isn't?
> > Both have a huge investment in time.
> >  
> I have nothing against paying for software (unless it's overpriced,
> not mentioning any company, Microsoft), but paying for software, which
> is required to make my product work, and charging more for the driver,
> that the device is worth, I do not agree with.
> 
> Also, the creators of the driver say that because the source wasn't
> open source, others couldn't help them, and the programmers were
> rushed, and pressured: Why didn't they make it open source in the
> first place???
> 
> I also belive that conexant, should provide the drivers for it's
> hundreds of users, as the driver for a winmodem, is part of the
> product, which has been brought.

Would you be happier paying $50 for the hardware and nothing for the
driver? In this case there would be no immediate commercial incentive
for the developers to release an updated driver. 

Another thing to consider. What if there is more than one driver
available for your piece of hardware written by different software
houses. Wouldn't you prefer to pay for only the best one? If the best
one didn't come with the hardware then you would end up paying twice.

I'm quite happy paying for software I really want to run. I know that my
$$ will help keep the linux revolution alive.