[Nottingham] Linux Emporium Talk (Simon Osborne)

Jim Moore james at the-computer-shop.co.uk
Mon Apr 2 09:48:43 BST 2007


You wrote:
On 31/03/07, namaste <marcel.taylor at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> JP: Not really. There's no documentation as such, it's all in the
> install scripts themselves, and we're not publishing them. We have given
> them to the Ubuntu developers, but they haven't done anything with them,
> which is very disappointing as they correct a couple of fundamental bugs
> in the Ubuntu acpi system as well as updating the data for Thinkpads and
> Lenovo 3000's. Producing documentation would be a costly exercise and
> wipe out any hope of profit from the laptop sales, which have a very low
> margin.

Does anybody else feel a bit uneasy with "it's all in the install
scripts themselves, and we're not publishing them" followed on by
"Producing documentation would be a costly exercise and wipe out any
hope of profit from the laptop sales, which have a very low margin."

Surely this kind of information would be very useful out in the public
domain to help developers create better ACPI support. It does seem
that Linux Emporium are putting profit before the community. Whatever
happened to sharing information and open source etc.

Simon

Yes, it makes me squirm a bit as well.
On saying that...
Thank Dell and Escom for the pinch on hardware margins. If I relied on 
boxshifting to turn a profit, I'd've gone bust long ago. The money is in 
servicing nowadays, and open source software helps that by further reducing 
overheads. LE's excuse about hardware profit margins doesn't wash with me; if 
they're relying on boxshifting to survive maybe it's time they revisited 
their business model.
BTTT: I get the same thing from hardware manufacturers when I ask them about 
Linux support: "We don't support Linux; developing drivers for [insert device 
here] or documenting the specifications would cost too much"... hence, said 
device only gets microsoft driver support. Thank <deity_of_the_week> for 
ndiswrapper, among other useful *nix goodies.

Jim
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