deanklear

Why are you addressing Linux like it's one company? The term envelops hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of companies across the world. Sure, you can charge money, like Red Hat does for support. Or you can charge nothing, like Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware... but there will never be the possibility for one company telling the others how to be. If Apache started charging $10,000 for processor licenses, then someone would find the previous release, fork it, and the entire community would switch to the free release. In the long run, I can tell you why Red Hat and similar companies will be better off than Microsoft. We chose to pay $1500 for Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium, because our new accounting program required MS-SQL. It's not a bad deal, really, unless you consider if we had to upgrade our entire office to XP. XP Pro Licenses = $3,000 MS Office Licenses = $2,000 Antivirus Licenses = $500 Anti-Spyware = $500 Firewall Device w/VPN = $450 SBS 2003 Premium with CALs = $1500 ------- $7,950.00 Linux Clients = $0 OpenOffice Licenses = $0 Antivirus (not currently needed) Anti-Spyware (not currently needed) Firewall Device (not needed with OpenBSD or FreeBSD firewalls) Server License = $0 ------------ $0 Even if we paid a consulting company $2,000 a year to maintain our system, which is easy to get since VNCs make it easy for them to avoid on-site visits, I would have 4 years of functional, supported setup versus the license to run software that might need support anyway. Under the linux setup I can write office documents, send e-mail, use Evolution as a replacement for Exchange groupware functionality, and not have to worry about Bill in Sales festering up his install with spyware or viruses. And if I absolutely have to have a feature they don't offer, I can pay someone money to add it in, because I have access to the source code. The only reason this isn't happening currently in my office is because I haven't found a suitable accounting solution. I say, bring on the DRM. We'll see how long Microsoft lasts once small businesses, which make up the vast majority of business consumers, are forced to pay full pop for their overpriced suites of software.