[ale] Speaking of RedHat 7.2

[Vernard Martin]

On Thu, 2001-11-01 at 08:38, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> I received a nice little email from RedHat banning my sale of RedHat 7.2
> CD's on Ebay.  This is understandable after a look at their policy.  I just
> need to add a disclaimer to the listing.  This has never been a problem
> before.  I assume that as the economy is getting worse, they are looking for
> pennies in any corner they can find.  By stopping me from selling the disti
> at a few dollars, maybe they can sell theirs for a few $20 dollars.  I doubt
> that.  But, just a line to let you guys know if you intend to resell this
> disti for distribution costs on ebay or yahoo or somewhere else.  Why even
> product an ISO if you want people to by your disti.  I guess it is the same
> reason why Bill Gates decided now was a good time to use copy protection in
> Windows.  Let them pirate until the dependency is there then bill the hell

I suspect that this is due to several reasons and not only the declining
technology market. Ebay has been targeted a lot in the last year and
asked to ban certain things. Ebay is the premier auction house right now
and everybody that is selling anything is doing their best to make sure
that folks don't think to go to Ebay first for their products. They
don't really care if you sell it but they need you to not be thought of
as a major distribution point. Otherwise there distribution channel
partners get a bit upset. 

And the reason they product .iso files for public consuption is because
redhat doesn't sell software as its primary income. It sells services
that use their established software as the primary vehicle. This is why
they will happily and cheerfully give alway hundreds of copies of their
basic distribution to linux user groups at the drop of the hat. They did
so recently for the ALE installfest and they have done so for years.
THey don't give away copies of their distro that come with support. Why?
Because support is what really costs them money and that is what they
are really selling. Check out http://www.cheapbytes.com if you would
like to see how a non-approved RedHat channel partner sells their
distribution without fear of nasty-grams in the mail.


V

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