[ale] Canonical makes Apple look so good...

Dan Lambert danlambert at bellsouth.net
Tue Mar 8 19:14:52 EST 2011


I am amazed at this group sometimes.

Virtually every commercial entity that is mentioned on here is vilified
and criticized to the extreme. If any of them don't meet the
expectations of this group in every regard, they are instantly put on
par with the most despised corporations on the planet.

I understand and appreciate the superior efforts of FOSS devotees, and
am particularly impressed by the Debian team of developers, and their
contributions to the open source community.

I want to remind everyone of the fact that BUSINESSES are in BUSINESS to
make a PROFIT. They are not charities, and some (most) of them use any
opportunity possible to extract a small percentage of profit from every
aspect they can.

If any of you are in the management of, or own a corporation, you are
fully aware of the need to make a profit, or you go out of business.

If any of you want to blast me for my position, go ahead. I work for one
of those evil FOR PROFIT businesses. It's kept my family fed, and put my
children through school. I used to own my own business, and I can tell
you for a fact that working in the corporate world is a hell of a lot
easier, because I don't have to worry about how to meet payroll, or how
to eke enough profit out to pay my own bills.

Dan

On Tue, 2011-03-08 at 17:59 -0500, Tim Watts wrote:

> You go to a small public beech one sunny day with your beech chair under
> arm looking for a nice spot. You find it, open your chair there and head
> back to your car for the rest of your stuff. Upon return, you find one
> Mr. Shuttleworth & Co. has replaced your chair with his and moved yours
> 3 feet from the tide...
> 
> Not to worry, I'm sure Canonical will put the money to good use funding
> Unity.</half-snark>
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2011-03-08 at 17:28 -0500, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-03-08 at 17:07 -0500, Jim Kinney wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> > > > What Canonical is doing is ethically wrong and is the level of crap I'd
> > > > expect to see from a politician, not someone who claims to care about
> > > > the free software ecosystem(s).
> > > 
> > > I think you hit the nail on the head. Cannonical is NOT about the free
> > > software ecosystem. Cannonical is as much of a corporate leech as
> > > Oracle.
> > > 
> > > They have always been that way.
> > 
> > Perhaps I'm just young, dumb, and naïve; I've seen them as pretty stupid
> > sometimes, I've certainly noted their lack of (direct) upstream
> > contributions (though they do seem to go out of their way to "launder"
> > them through Debian at times), but up until now I've never seen them as
> > a truly harmful entity.
> > 
> > Now I'm convinced that they need to be ejected from our universe, though
> > I suppose that's as useless a statement as any.  It's not like I have
> > the power to effect that change.  That's probably a good thing.
> > 
> > > SuSE used to distribute their distro with a closed-source installer.
> > > Thus I quit even tinkering with their stuff. They saw the light,
> > > opened the code and make themselves some serious geek cred hacking
> > > video drivers for X. That was an (almost) excusable infraction.
> > > 
> > > But to change the affiliate code on software you get to use for free
> > > so the developers get cut out of a few nickles to feed their
> > > caffeine/music habits shows a serious (in my mind) lack of ethics.
> > 
> > If only it was to feed their caffeine and music habits.  They were
> > donating it all to GNOME.  Nevermind that: it's just as wrong either
> > way.
> > 
> > I've never really thought that there would ever be a time where I would
> > think of a license revocation clause as a good thing, but I'm starting
> > to think that it would be.  I know that if I were the people behind
> > Banshee, I'd be absolutely livid.  Hell, I'm livid as it is.
> > 
> > Of course, they have no grounds to sue, they have no method by which to
> > revoke the license to Canonical, and they have no means by which to get
> > their (well-deserved!) money without convincing everyone to install
> > their own packaged version.  Leaves a nasty, nasty taste in my mouth.
> > Just like politicians do.  Nasty.
> > 
> > Ubuntu 11.04: The Nasty Nabber.
> > 
> > 	--- Mike
> > 
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> 
> 
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