[Lula] What I've been doing lately...

[Peter Benjamin]

At 11:11 AM 5/30/2006, ted at gould.cx wrote:
>On Mon, 29 May 2006, Christopher Smith wrote:
>>Ted Gould wrote:
>>I've got a whole bunch of free, but closed-source software from DirecTV
>>in the form of my access card.

Has anyone every found 'free' software that comes on a product's CD
to be of any value other than teasing you with buying their pro
version to get the features you really need for the software to
be useful?  I wasted my time for the first 5-6 CD's I got with
extra free software.  Now, 100 CDs later, I have never wasted my
time.

>Likewise, you don't think that Windows is gratis because you buy a laptop from Dell and it comes with Windows.

I found out the size of the "discount" that volume Windows dealers get.
It's now cheaper to buy a $200 computer with Windows, than to buy
the Windows OS CD in a retail store.


>distribute an alternative version of Firefox.  To my knowledge, no one has done this.

I thought of the many unknown browser brands out there now,
that most were based on Firefox source code, or some branch
of it's predecessors.  That rumor had reached me.  I was
surprised to find there are dozens of web sites offering 
their "own" browser.

Can anyone confirm this rumor?  I had visited 3 sites that had such
browsers, and they were very similar to Firefox or Mozilla.

>That says to me, that even in Open Source, branding is important and that having software that includes a brand gives it some momentum where a fork would be discouraged.

I'm not sure if that is why forks are discouraged, as much as new
features in the main stream Open source branded software (take Mozilla/Firefox)
means every few months, the branching brand must re-integrate their changes,
and retest, which we all know is a massive untaking as the branches start
differing.

That is why I have stay main stream OS.


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