[Wolves] Two things...

[Peter Evans]

On Thursday 10 Nov 2005 12:25, Simon Morris wrote:
> It was a
> statement on how they are going to offer a free product in the hope of
> getting you addicted to the commerical version and then your business is
> locked into the subscription licencing model where you pay year on year
> for the technology.
With the added context I can now appreciate what was being said.

The retrospective on M$ beginnings is interesting - is it possible that the 
future of F/OSS could possibly go the same way in some fashion?

The comment regarding the subscription license model is something I'm not sure 
I fully understand though.

Certainly you are expected to pay support fees - if you want to be able to 
have access to support facilities and possibly patches/bug fixes (not too 
sure if you have to have paid support fees for patch/bug fixes in the M$ 
world, which I should really know).  However isn't this the same model under 
which RH and SuSE offer their 'Enterprise' products?

The only (current) subscription license I'm aware of is the 'upgrade 
assurance' model, which isn't available to everyone and isn't pushed onto 
people if they don't want it.  I do know that the future vision in a lot of 
companies is to offer subscription services, and depending on how it's 
implemented (cost/ease of use/flexibility, etc) then that may not be a bad 
thing.  Hey you were right it is a subjective phrase!
-- 
Regards,

Pete Evans