[CoLoCo] Canonical To Start Offering Commercial Software Via Aptitude

[Kevin Fries]

On Thu, 2008-02-07 at 11:14 -0700, David L. Willson wrote:
> I'm not sure this is new.  I've been installing VMware Server out of the
> Partner repo for a long while now.  Or do you mean that they are putting
> proprietary into 'main'?  That would suck.

No the VMWare server in partner or commercial (they keep changing the
name of this repo), is a free but non-open product, as is Adobe Reader.
What Canonical announced was true commercial software.  First starting
with Parallels.  This is a full paid version.  What they will be putting
in the commercial repo is a trial-ware version.  Then if you like the
product, you can purchase it by going to the Canonical Store and
download a license key.

I actually see this as positive.  One of my favorite programs for back
office use is Kaspersky AV.  Their products are fantastic, but are not
free.  They usually distribute via a download from their website with a
30 day trialware license.  You then purchase the commercial license, and
drop it into the correct location, and your install is then turned
commercial.  Kaspersky is one of the few anti-virus programs that not
only works on Linux, but is extremely well designed for it.  This move
by Canonical will hopefully make installing it on Ubuntu much, much
easier.

Since all the commercial software will be in the partners repo, it is
easy enough for those that get "wiggy" over paid/commercial software to
simply not add that repository which is turned off by default anyway.


-- 
Kevin Fries
Senior Linux Engineer
Computer and Communications Technology, Inc
A Division of Japan Communications Inc.