On Mon, 2007-06-18 at 16:24 +0100, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote: > Over the last few years, I've discovered that many people get confused > if I mention "Linux" as they want to know what it is and why it is > "owned" by a large number of companies but mainly by people who make > very little (if any) money from it and isn't available as a "product" > per-se and how it can be free if people work on it and why it is > downloaded and who are these people who aren't microsoft and etc, > etc...
I was really just asking to make sure it was a conscious decision (which Chris says it was) and I suspect I was probably wrong to say the word 'Linux' (I meant more the FOSS in general and the community around it) but I'm still not completely convinced about the current "why it's free?" section. Maybe it's because I'm rather sceptical (read: paranoid) about corporations but at the moment I read it as "Canonical made this" and that, as someone that didn't know any better, wouldn't make me feel any more secure than Microsoft making it. People are used to Microsoft et al forcing them to do stuff that they might not want to do and they might presume Canonical plays a similar role with ubuntu. The leaflet mentions that Canonical make money from business users (which might make someone think they couldn't use it for business-related activities without paying for it) and paranoid-me might worry that at any minute Canonical could change their mind and start charging for the OS - or for customer support of it. They are a business in the business of making money after all. If *I* was reading it, I would prefer just something more along the lines of the last paragraph - "thousands of people around the world, including us at ubuntu-uk.org, give their time to developing and supporting ubuntu because they believe everyone deserves to have a free, reliable and safe operating system" - then I'd be less worried about the evil business[1] stuff. Of course I'm not the target audience for this leaflet and other people might more feel secure knowing there is a company running the show. I just thought I'd add my view on it. -Louisa [1] Joke. I don't think Canonical are evil. Aside from the Mark Shuttleworth eating babies thing. -- Louisa Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
