[KLUG Members] Caldera seat license explained...

[Adam Williams]

>I don't believe that those proprietary products are what caused Caldera to
>make a per seat license decision. Caldera has always been wishy washy on
>wether or not the GPL made any business sense. 

Well, usually the GPL does not make the best business sense,  but it is
good for society, technology, users, etc....  That doesn't mean you
CAN'T build succesful businesses (Redhat) around the GPL,  but you'll
never make as much money as a certain company in the north-west.  But to
a true-blue American capitalist like Love, society, technology, users,
etc... are of no intrest or value.  You shouldn't expect them to sit
around and discuss the virtues of the GPL,  and that's exactly why the
GPL (a legally binding intellectual property license) exists.

>In the recent past Ransom Love's has expierced his confusion on this issue.  
>This is going to hurt Caldera

I assumed along time ago they they were going to die any day now,  but
like a sleazy politicial they just keep popping up.  I do give them
credit for having one of the first truly useable-as-my-workstation
distributions.

>btw. Jbuilder is bundled with SuSE and SuSE has no per seat license so
>that assertion doesn't hold true, that because Boreland does so does
>Caldera.

The devil is in the details.  SuSe ships a trial version of jBuilder,
not the fully enabled "Enterprise" environment.  That is most definetely
NOT free.

And "Volution" is NOT free either.  Not that anyone cares
two-skink-tails about Volution,  but the point remains.

>This is why I give major props to Redhat and specificaly to Bob
>Young. Dispite the temptation to move away from the GPL Redhat has
>resisted. Redhat choose to do something and do it right. 

I'm a big RedHat fan,  I think Linux has made it into corporate America
wholly and completely thanks to Redhat.  They legitimized Linux and
plopped themselves within the line-of-sight of CIOs.  They may not have
the absolute best package-manager or quality-control system,  but when
IBM, Oracle, Informix, etc... says Linux they mean "RedHat".  And
without the piles of money poured into Linux by those horrible
corporate-oligarchs Linux would be a very-pale shadow of what it is
today.

>>Caldera is doing seat license because of proprietary products (Borland JBuiler
>>and Volution) that are now bundled with their distribution. 
>>http://www.101com.com/elx/article.asp?articleid=4086
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