[ale] Acceptance of License discussion

[jeff hubbs]

Tommie M. Jones wrote:

> Is anyone keeping up with the license discussion at politechbot.
> (http://www.politechbot.com)  They are discussing an article on freshmeat
> about giving search rights to software companies when a user accepts a
> license.  It is a good discussion and a lot of lawyers are giving their
> opinions.
> 
> At times like this I wish there was a marketing budget associated with OS.
> I keep imagining a great TV commercial that looks like a Scene from Waco,
> Texas.

After all this time, I would like to think that Red Hat, at least, would 
  be in a position to mount at least one TV or radio commercial.  I 
realize that a wrinkle between Red Hat doing a commercial and Apple or 
MS doing a commercial is that Red Hat <> Linux and therefore they cannot 
really take the same tack as those guys.  IBM's TV ads have done a good 
job of getting the "L word" slightly imprinted.  Unfortunately, I never 
saw the one in the Avery Brooks series where he's talking about Linus 
and his doing "something revolutionary:  he gives [Linux] away, on the 
Internet."  If I had seen a spot like that years ago back when I was 
pursuing NT-based solutions as the way to unseat mainframe and 
minicomputer hegemony, it certainly would have given me pause.

Even earlier than that, I worked up some really interesting graphs that 
showed how license costs for Banyan VINES scaled far more advantageously 
than those of Novell Netware.  It was just after that that I first 
learned of Linux and first tried to get a machine up on Slackware after 
a protracted "floppy party;" imagine how it influenced me to learn that 
in Linux lay yet another alternative whose costs essentially scaled flat 
(a characteristic which, to me, is more important than being free {as in 
beer}).

- Jeff




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