But is it legal?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| hkwint Jan 20, 2010 4:15 PM EDT |
Carla, you, just like me, know $5 + shipping fees has to be illegal software. Legal software cannot go for these prices! Ask BSA if you don't believe me, at least they're trustworthy (far more than I am), because they're a large organization of large trustworthy companies. Like the company selling us software for $30k per license. You know, the one where the GUI is inconsistent, a total mess, doesn't have keyboard shortcuts, doesn't even have an easy CLI like cheap ACAD, doesn't open a file when you tell it to using the accompanying DB, does have a java interface but of course not supported, and sometimes crashes for no apparent nor repeatable reason. If a pile of legal authorized genuine horse... like that is $30k, then a complete OS + added Apps (probably illegally downloaded by Romanian Astalavista-h@ckerz from the Applstore) for $5 surely can't be legal! Those gotta be Chinese licenses, only allowed for Chinese students who cannot pay $39 for legal genuine Ubuntu. I'm pretty sure the $5 freeware you're advertizing has region code turned on and is not usable over here, at least not on my PC which only allows 'lowlands' region code software, where the EULA only allows you to run it when you are not above 40m above sea level. And after all, you still need Windows to run any software on your PC. Accept it, running software without Windows is just against laws of physics, the universe would just collapse. Apart from that I'm not sure if it's even legal. So first you pay for genuine Windows, then only to turn your PC in a pirated machine using pirated Ubuntu? Come on, we can do better than that, can't we? I mean like, can you even remove Ubuntu from Windows? I saw a flock of grandma's on the web who were fighting for their lives just because they couldn't get the darn thing removed from their FAT-table. Turned out the Ubuntu-thing had illegaly written to the holy part of the FAT-table, the 'master'block to which only Microsoft is allowed to write. Software like that which messes with those holy blocks has to be nasty! And companies screwing grannies even more so. In financial cumbersome times like this, we have to make sure large multinational companies with tons of lobbyists - like Canonical - still can earn their bonuses! I mean, come on, people at Canonical work harder and do a far better job than those at Bank of America! And because of the multi-billion bonuses BoA and Goldman Sachs pay, I'm pretty sure high profile Canonical top execs with high market value will leave if Canonical doesn't earn enough because people like you advertize these pirated unauthorized non-genuine unbranded non-watermarked probably home-copy-brewn snappy malware/crippleware ridden Ubuntu! I mean, like, come on, like, it isn't even a bare OS! Take the Dell ones with the Dell GUI, they come with lots of crippleware, but even those offer less GB of software than Ubuntu does. So Ubuntu has got to be full of crippleware, at least I imagine some 10% of those 4GB being nothing more than that! But then, even with so much software, it even doesn't offer full Silverlight support, you know, the new Microsoft platform you need to browse Bing and watch all them movies. So basically it's crippled software! Yeah, you know what your problem is, you can't distinguish between your dreams and reality! Believe me, the above is 100% true, I'm a tech analyst, of all people, I know these things best! I mean, two years ago I received a nice red Ferrari snappy Vista laptop from some voluntary people and I mean - this was huge! No, wrong company, I mean gigantic - it was really snappy and all stuff like that. But Ubuntu doesn't need such a fast Ferrari laptop, so that basically explains it doesn't use all the resources available in modern cheap high performance $2000 laptops efficiently. Basically, when you buy $2000 of hardware, Ubuntu only uses $200 of it. So that means you throw $1800 away! How's that for ya? You're pretty dumb user if you do such a thing. Moreover, Vista licenses - Vista only became better after SP1 and is now cheaper than ever BTW! - also offer you corporate first hot-line 26hr/day support, something I pretty much doubt Ubuntu-back-at-cha does. You know all those poor grannies, they need corporate support, someone to call if their laptop stops working because of it's Ubuntu-infested malware. You know, like, when they would try to call you to help them with Ubuntu, you would be far too busy with playing with your dogs and real-life stuff like that. But just because you have time because you don't run Windows doesn't mean you should spend it for something else than helping poor grannies! I mean, some of them, well, basically - and I'm not trying to make grannies look bad, I've two of them myselves - but what I'm telling is, some of them have a hard time calling with their Windows smartphones and someone has to help them calling the Vista-hotline. It's just very egocentric of you to have fun outside in real life while cron in Ubuntu takes care of the stuffz you got goin' on while grannies struggling to use a phone can't use their $2000 laptop! Yeah, how selfish is that? Bill Gates serves as an example to all of us. He just donated $4million to the help-poor-grannies foundation. Yeah, that's some really philantropically person. At least he does something for the people! Xcuz me, but your 'no-cost' Windows killer 's not going to change the world. Apart from that, Chrome is better than U-browser anyway. I've seen 20m-high billboards outside at the highway near the airport, it was on the cover (frontpage and backpage) of our local free nationwide-newspaper, it's 2m tall on all busstops near me. So Google throwing that amounts of money at their browser really shows they believe in their browser. I mean, like, take Firefox. Those people at Firefox comp, they don't believe in their browser. Otherwise they already would have spent some real money to conquer those Chrome ads. Yeah, like, and above all, those Chrome browser is not evil. Can't say that of Firefox, like Firefox is helping spread democracy in China! Well, last time I looked, even though 1 million people nowadays worldwide use Firefox, even now, Chinese democracy and world peace hasn't become any closer. Oh, and BTW, those Firefox users are only temporary. When IE9 arrives, it will have all functions, but better implemented, that FF4 also offers. And FF4 is not even in Alpha! Apart from that, IE9 scores 150 points at the Acid-4 test, you know, the one showing all the LSD-pills when done. So you know, your wet FF dreams, well, not going to happen. Justz accept it! Oh, and BTW, what's up with the editors of LinuxToday? They should be removing links to pirated software! It's a shame they allow it. Wait till the BSA finds out, they will deal with LT! BTW2: And it's available via torrentz, but everyone knows only warez and songz are available via torrentz. I mean, look at Apple and Microfrots, their softwarez via torrentz isn't legal! OK TxtEd, outdoing that is going to be a real challenge. |
| tracyanne Jan 20, 2010 4:26 PM EDT |
As far as I'm aware there is no legal impediment to selling copies of Ubuntu or any other Linux Distribution for twice that price or more, assuming you can get people to buy it. Just because you get it for free, is no reason to assume you can't on sell it for as much as the market will bear. Maybe your copying costs are really really high, I don't know, or maybe like Apple's Mac the Label or Logo you use is really expensive. |
| hkwint Jan 20, 2010 4:32 PM EDT |
For people with slow / expensive internet connections, those DVD's are pretty useful. In 2005, I had to pay about $1 for every 100 meg above 1Gb / month. So downloading 'full' Gentoo would have costed $30. Compared to that $26 isn't expensive, so I was happy to pay €10 for it. But as far as I understand, affordable access to broadband is available in the US, so I'd be pretty surprised if lots of people need this service. At least there's somebody doing Linux marketing, that's the good news I guess. |
| tracyanne Jan 20, 2010 5:12 PM EDT |
@henke, As far as I'm aware, affordable broadband (or even broadband) isn't ubiquitous in the US. My partner has internet friends in Various parts of the US, and most of them are on dialup. |
| tmx Jan 20, 2010 5:13 PM EDT |
Lol, that's the biggest ranting post I've ever seen. "...IE9 scores 150 points at the Acid-4 test..." Personally I pay no heed to Acid3 test. Opera got 100, but render pages nowhere are nice as Webkit based browsers and fail to render a few pages correctly. Having said that, Presto engine is quite fast and they are always improving. I wonder if Canonical have some policy in distributing Ubuntu, such as you can only charge a reasonable fee for distribution. But this is obviously a quick money making scheme. Scum of the earth imo. Remind me of the recent Haiti earthquake and scammers setup fake charities to take advantage of donations. A DVD-R sold in bundle probably cost 20cents each and USPS Priority is about $4. They obviously are getting high profit gain from this, although you have to consider how many people actually fall for the scheme. Even if you didn't have the internet speed to download 700mb, couldn't you go to the library or coffee shop and use their connection? |
| hkwint Jan 20, 2010 5:28 PM EDT |
Indeed, I think ACID is a limited test. But I'm not a web developer, that's only what I understand. And sharing your connection would be a good thing. When we had the paid connection, I always downloaded lots when I was at friends from the university, because the university had one of the fastest networks in the country. |
| tuxchick Jan 20, 2010 5:51 PM EDT |
LOL, brilliant Hans, nicely done! :) |
| kingttx Jan 20, 2010 7:00 PM EDT |
@hkwint: "For people with slow / expensive internet connections, those DVD's are pretty useful." Aye, but I'd personally rather spend less for the exact same thing if possible. Unless WashingtonCD is doing some major value-add (love that marketspeak!) then ~$7 is a better deal. However, if someone really feels like they need to part with their money, here's my phone number... :) |
| jdixon Jan 20, 2010 7:13 PM EDT |
> As far as I'm aware, affordable broadband (or even broadband) isn't ubiquitous in the US. No where near ubiquitous. :( For many rural areas, the only broadband option is satellite, and not everyone can get it. |
| qcimushroom Jan 20, 2010 7:43 PM EDT |
hkwint, thanks for the good laugh. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jan 20, 2010 8:56 PM EDT |
Regarding the "right" to sell GPL'd software. I think you can charge whatever you wish. Red Hat charges a lot, although they're selling support, and you just happen to get the software to go along with it. My main machine right now doesn't have an optical burner, and its DVD/CD-ROM drive is very finicky about CD-R discs. It does fine with regular CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs. It also has no trouble with DVD-R. ... So I pretty much have to find a computer with a working DVD-RW drive in order to make a bootable ISO disc. I haven't yet ordered pre-burned CDs or DVDs, but I'm thinking about it. For convenience's sake, I'd gladly pay $3-5 for a CD and $5-10 for a DVD. That kind of pricing is very attractive ... |
| jdixon Jan 20, 2010 9:23 PM EDT |
> For convenience's sake, I'd gladly pay $3-5 for a CD and $5-10 for a DVD. Cheapbytes (www.cheapbytes.com) has many distros for about that price. Several other places offer them. A quick Google search on Linux CD's returns about half a dozen sites. |
| TxtEdMacs Jan 20, 2010 9:25 PM EDT |
Quoting:OK TxtEd, outdoing that is going to be a real challengeHans, I am NOT greedy, a simple donation of a significant fraction of the shillings you earned will keep me quite and you out of court. Very reasonable terms, no signature or paper trail required. YBT |
| hkwint Jan 21, 2010 5:09 AM EDT |
BT: "No questions asked", uh? Serious: The official OpenBSD set is in stores for 60 Euri, and most of the money goes to OpenBSD. You get some 'serious artwork' and a 'release song' as a bonus in this set AFAIK. Some Linux-distro's have the same model from what I know. Maybe Ubuntu could spread some 'official limited edition' sets for $40 or so as well, with some nice brown artwork and some nice 'for human beings' song. Maybe cooperate with Magnatunes to bundle some ogg-soundtracks of new bands, and offer some fancy package with 3D-holograms of a penguin + Ubuntu written with some LEDs. Such a thing would be a great gadget, even Apple doesn't have it. Yes, that would be 'huge'. |
| number6x Jan 21, 2010 11:39 AM EDT |
This is why Red Hat trademarked their logos, and then provided a list of all the files in their distro that contain trademarked content. It allows for the easy creation of something like CentOS stripped of trademarked content but full of all the important stuff. However, it allows red Hat to stop the distribution by third parties using the 'Red Hat' name and logo. A pretty interesting solution actually. Canonical does not do this. The best thing to do is to make sure people know there are cheaper ways to buy the same thing. Both google and bing return the canonical site as first result if you search for 'buy ubuntu' or 'get ubuntu'. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jan 21, 2010 12:41 PM EDT |
Bravo on the rant Hans..it sure would (or still could I think) have made one heck of a humorous op/ed feature. |
| hkwint Jan 21, 2010 7:33 PM EDT |
Better save it for April, Scott. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jan 22, 2010 2:49 AM EDT |
The thing about OpenBSD is they release twice a year. $50 x 2 ... |
| Koriel Jan 22, 2010 1:39 PM EDT |
If you live in the UK, I used these guys when I couldnt be bothered downloading on the 512k DSL i had at the time, I can highly recommend them http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk. Just when I left Scotland they began upgrading everyone to 8Meg for free just my luck i ended up in rural southern Vermont with only dial up available so Cheapbytes helped a lot. |
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