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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!sdd.hp.com!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!karl From: karl@NeoSoft.com (Karl Lehenbauer) Subject: Re: selling 386BSD (was Re: 386BSD on CD-ROM?) Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900 Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 19:19:09 GMT Message-ID: <1992Aug16.191909.14072@NeoSoft.com> References: <1557@hcshh.hcs.de> <1992Aug14.160938.22432@zip.eecs.umich.edu> <1561@hcshh.hcs.de> Lines: 30 A truly free system is one that can be sold as well as given away. You want this thing to take over the world, right? That includes letting people fix it up, make special versions for specific purposes (cash registers, realtime, etc.), and sell it. It is not a coincidence that the Jolitzes allow for others to sell 386BSD... otherwise it will be relegated to being nothing more than a laboratory curiosity. Secondly, free software isn't free. It was a lot of work for us to download 386BSD, twice now, and get it running. Reading news, finding bugs, fixing bugs, pulling down and applying bug fixes, maintaining versions, updating, upgrading, and managing this thing costs money, directly and indirectly. Even if you value your time at some very low amount of dollars per hour, you are spending thousands of dollars to do it the way you're doing it. Someone who has a lot of time and little money can take the time to cut a complete 70-or-so floppy distribution including X from a friend's copy. In a corporate environment, or really for anyone making even halfway decent money, cutting 70 floppies looks like something to be avoided at all costs. I have heard that John Lennon willed all of his work tapes and such to the world, subject to the caveat that nobody should make money distributing any of it, and I wonder how in the hell any of it will be distributed. -- -- Email info@NeoSoft.com for info on getting interactive Internet access. You will now awaken feeling relaxed and refreshed, remembering everything you've read except the details of the Omega contingency plan.