[Debian-uk] Re: Expo aftermath

[Roger Leigh]

Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> writes:

> At 26 Oct 2002 13:33:46 +0100,
> Roger Leigh wrote:
> > > He actually knows enough about the YaST license situation to know that
> > > the SuSE position is flawed and still be able to argue in favour of
> > > it.  I get the impression that he does it as an intellectual exercise.
> > 
> > In what way is it flawed?
> > 
> > I can't see that there's much wrong from a licensing standpoint, since
> > aggregation of free with non-free software is allowed, and there's
> > nothing illegal with their method of distribution.  Or is the flaw
> > more subtle than this?
> 
> Yes, I'm of the opinion that it's flawed from a business model
> standpoint.  Ok, so they're trying to stop the Red Hat becomes
> Mandrake, Definite, foo, etc. scenario, but I think you'd have
> difficulty proving that Mandrake's existence has done either Red Hat or
> SuSE any harm, so I'm not sure why they care.
> 
> On the other hand, their current stance means that folks like John
> Winters, cannot sell unboxed duplicates of SuSE, with the end result
> that people who want to dip their toe in the water buy another disro,
> which if the person in question is the first person to try Linux in a
> decent sized corporate might well eventually mean that SuSE miss out
> on a decent sized support contract.

That's very true, and I made that point when I was discussing it with
Roger.  When we recently ran an installday at YLUG in York, SuSE was
quickly discounted as a choice for preloading onto new users' machines
due to the copying issues, and also because we didn't want to lock new
users into having to pay for updates and non-free software.  We chose
Mandrake instead, and burned Mandrake, RedHat and Debian CDs as
required.

I think that if those users liked what we installed, there's a good
chance they'll stick with it, and maybe buy it next time or recommend
its use to others, perhaps in companies.

> They would argue that it means that if some large hardware vendor
> wants to shove out a CD with their stuff on it, they get to charge
> said vendor a wedge of cash for the privilege, which while true, only
> actually works in the short term, because eventually (as demonstrated
> by some conversations at the show) people wake up to the fact that if
> they chose Debian, say, they don't have to pay anyone, with the net
> result that a few thousand CDs go out with something other than SuSE
> on them, and a significant percentage of the recipients will just
> stick with whatever they get, and be more lost support contracts in
> future.

I didn't realise that they make most of the money from boxed sets in
bookshops and other stores a couple of months after a major release.
I think they consider making the software freely available will eat
into that market (and prevent `clones'), but it will prevent a lot of
people from evaluating it.

Their business model seems quite different from the other commercial
distros, and maybe they'll be lucky, but I can't see them gaining many
first-time users compared to the others with the current policy.

> Feel free to quote me on this in a couple of years time when SuSE are
> on the ropes (although I said something similar about SCO and Caldera
> years ago, and somehow they are still hanging on by the fingertips, so
> it may take longer than that)

I'll remember ;-)

> My advice to them would be to realise what it is that they make money
> out of (which is offering support in one form or another, rather than
> licensing software), and sell that.  The more "rip-off" SuSE copies
> there are out there, the larger their potential audience.

Agreed.

> I think that covers why I think it's a flawed policy --- feel free to
> argue the opposite view.

I won't argue, since I think the same.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh
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