The Ubuntu Difference

[Mark Wallace]

There have been recent posts on the subject of licensing methods and I
let them pass because my recent surgery left me too tired to do any
research.

Most linux distributions have a marketing model that involves selling
the free software in a box that has some printed documentation and
online or toll free number customer support on some basis.  An example
is Mandriva, that, although you can download it for free, has something
called Mandrake Club, that for a monthly charge, provides customer
support.

This marketing model hasn't worked terribly well for anybody.  It also
has held back Linux's growth by not providing enough capitalistic profit
for anybody to promote Linux.

Linspire and SUSE found that by not providing their product for free,
Linux enthusiasts found them less desirable than their competitors.

Mandriva and Red Hat found this marketing model unprofitable.  Mandriva
went through a bankruptcy, and Red Hat spun it's home desktop operation
off as Fedora, because they couldn't justify doing a lot of development
on something that lost money.  It's hard to sell customer support when
local user's groups will help you for free.

This marketing model also creates disincentives to make Linux more user
friendly.  Why should somebody pay for a free product if it installs
quickly and painlessly?  You create a need for your product if they have
to pay you for the advice that they need to make it work.

Debian and Slackware never used this marketing model, but they never
broke out of the geek toy market and into the mainstream, either.

I think that, at least partly, Ubuntu is a response to these cold
economic realities.  It's model is different in that it doesn't have a
boxed set to sell.  It tries to make it's money through a parent
operation, called Canonical, Ltd, that sells the product to businesses.

A business needs it's software problems solved RIGHT NOW, and is willing
to pay for this.  It can't wait while the house geek tinkers with it's
install.  The customers are calling asking questions about their
accounts and they know how go to the competition if they don't get
answers.

Having no one that you can call at Debian makes it useless for small
business.  Both the Slackware and Debian sites refer you to other places
for support.

This is where Ubuntu makes it's money:

http://www.canonical.com/services


There is no Kubuntu Club or boxed set.  I think that the founders of
Ubuntu could see that the above marketing model was fatally flawed and
something else had to be done.

I think that they also saw that, although Debian had great
possibilities, it wasn't being marketed effectively.   The Debian
project doesn't even have a paid staff!!!

They decided that, by being truly free and user friendly, people would
start using Linux and that would create demand for the services that
they provide at the above web site.  If you follow the links, you will
see that, for a fee, they will train your company's system
administrator. 

Over the long run, your company will be better off. They will have
software that continuously upgrades for free and is less susceptible to
viruses.

Sorry to be so didactic about this, but I could sense that some of the
group members, seeing that Ubuntu had substantially solved Linux's lack
of user friendliness problems, were concerned that it might "go
commercial."  It is good enough to sell, but that's only because it is
not for sale.  Much of the development of Ubuntu has been by end users.
Canonical only has a small paid staff.

The end users who spend their weekends writing bug fixes would be less
likely to do so if they suspected that somebody was going to turn around
and sell the fruits of their labor.

But Ubuntu and Linux were never anti-capitalist.  The Open Office and
Mozilla projects were started by profit making companies that didn't
have the resources to compete with Microsoft except by going open source
in order to get their products developed for free.

Open Office was started by Sun Microsystems.  They had bought a
productivity suite from a small German company; and needed it developed.
It still sells a proprietary edition of it called Star Office.

Mozilla was sponsored by Netscape, now part of Time Warner.  Microsoft
was overwhelming their proprietary web browser by developing a
competitive product in house and then including it for free with their
operating system.


-- 
Robert Mark Wallace
Tita Palaca Wallace
Regina E P Wallace
R M Ceferino P Wallace
60 Delaware Road
Newburgh, NY 12550-3802
Telephone: (845) 566-0586

More people use Linux than Apple.  To get Linux for FREE,
go to www.kubuntu.com