[mdlug] Linspire caves in to Microsoft patent threat

[Michael Corral]

Wolfger a ecrit:
> Or are you upset that a commercial distro is charging a price?

No, I have no problem at all with any distro charging a price.
Linspire has been doing that for years, that was OK with me.
What bugs me is their caving in to Microsoft's patent protection
scheme and passing that extra cost onto their customers. Er, sorry,
I mean "offering their users a choice". You yourself described
MS' claims as "FUD, FUD, FUD, FUDity FUD". Why is Linspire
lending legitimacy to this FUD by offering to have their users
pay that extortion payment? There is no need to if it's FUD.
The only other commercial distro doing that is Novell/Suse, of
course. Others like Red Hat, Mandrake and Xandros, who are in
business to make money also, aren't doing this.

Actually, this whole discussion about Linspire being a business
has made me look at this from a whole new angle. I had been just
chalking Linspire's decision up to plain cowardice, but now I'm
starting to think that greed may be involved. Linspire will
actually be able to *profit* off this Microsoft FUD. That's
something I hadn't even considered before. It's just too bad
that their profit will come at their users' expense.

Michael