Pg 20 of Pune Mirror, 15 Feb 2009 has an advertisement from indiatimes.com. It is selling a desktop for ~Rs 25,000 and "3 in 1 combo linux DVDs" for an offer price of Rs 500. If that was not enough they are touting maximum retail price (MRP) of Rs 1000. These 3 DVVDs have Suse 11,, Ubuntu 8.1 and Fedora 10.
Firstly these DVDs are free to download and use. As per GPL(at least thats what Ubuntu uses) you can charge for services ie. burning the DVD but not for the product. It goes to show how incompetent indiatimes.com staff can be. Wares sold here are not being monitored for license regulation.
Linux is not Microsoft, so it will not have a dedicated team of lawyers to defend the licenses. I hate it when such "resellers" get away without any problem and charge any absurd price. Is it because of such people that linux comes to be known as unfiendly?
Maybe it is only because it can be easily burnt and sold that linux has become fairly popular. Now all assembled PCs come with Linux installed by default. People in India still prefer free software to M$ Windows which pinches your pocket with a price around Rs. 5000.
I am also looking forward to a good commercial model being developed for Linux. As recession hits, people in US are shifting towards Linux but they want some support and maintenance mechanism. My all bets are on Linux for now.
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