>Yes, but you're not answering the core question, why put in the work to >put together a Linux distro, letting people download it for free to >begin with? That is a very good question. I'm currently running Kubunto. I didn't pay a cent for it. Before that, I was running Knoppix. I didn't pay a cent for that either. I have, in the past, however, bought boxed sets for Red Hat, Yellow Dog, and Suse. I've also bought various Linux books and magazines. I guess some of that money has went to pay the programmers that gave us all this free software, but still, I feel that there are probably a lot of programmers who have recieved little if anything as a reward for all of their hard work. Some people do make money on Linux and open source; I'm sure of that. But what about the rest? Why have they given us so much for so little? Well, I suspect that open source programmers, being users of open source programs themselves, love the freedom that open source has to offer--the freedom to do with software as they please, to modify it, make it better, to share it with other people freely, openly, and legally. You simply can't do that with a proprietary product. In short, I think that open source programmers are giving back to the community that gave to them, plain and simple. There's something else about free software, though. I see my computer as an extension of my mind. It's my creative place. All my good ideas make their way to my computer. I write shell scripts and little programs to customize my computer. I also create all of my own background images using the Gimp, Inkscape, and other free programs. The information I put on my computer is crystalized thought. Customized programs are an extension of the thought process itself. To take programs, to make them proprietary, is kind of like thought control. I like intellectual freedom, so I like free software. But freedom isn't free, or so I've heard. So how do we go about paying for this freedom? How do we keep it alive, going strong? We need a way to make giving out money on the Internet as easy as possible. If, right now, I had a Gimp developer in front of me, I'd have a couple hundred bucks to give him (or her), yet I haven't paid for my last two Linux distributions, distributions that have given me much more than just the Gimp. Paying for things in a networked environment is too inconvenient. I've heard that there are shareware programmers that have hardly made a cent. These are people who are actually asking for payment. It's sad that those who give so much without even a wimper about not getting paid, in many cases, aren't getting paid. I could say much more, but I'll just leave it at this for now. Jacob -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm