[plug] RH7.x

[Colin Muller]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 03:10:20PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> Regarding the issue of whether users of Red Hat Linux should be
> charged for bug fixes, I have this ideal (yes, I know that I am
> altruistic), that, when a person provides a good or service, and the
> good or service is faulty, it should be repaired free of charge. In
> this case, that means free patches.

Red Hat provides not only free patches, but also free upgrades. In
addition, they provide the free service of packaging these patches and
upgrades into RPM files to make them easy to install; they also
provide the source files, if that's what you prefer. Then they put
them onto a RedHat server and do not charge for the outgoing bandwidth
from their server that people use to download and/or mirror them. They
post regular notifications of patches and upgrades to their Web site,
post these same notifications to free public mailing lists which you
can subscribe to, hosted on their servers, for those who would like
the notifications to come to them rather than have to go to the Web
site to check for them. They let you take advantage of all this at no
charge, whether or not you have ever paid them a single cent. How
exactly does all this contravene your ideal?

Colin