Red Hat no longer supporting a desktop/free version, SuSe is now bought out by Novell. Seems almost like opensource is about to be bought out. I know there are other flavors but the big boys are turing to profit.

er... I though Novell bought SuSe? :p

And I think this is great. IBM is backing the deal with cash, and now that RedHat is no more that makes SuSe the no 1 distro out there. This is really gonna get interesting.

Infinite

Agreed, last I checked linux was open source, it's like DUDE WTF!

I said Novell. I get the feeling Linux will remain free and open source but add ons to it will cause it to be bought and sold like MS products.

For example, say wine was now open source. I know it is. but say MS made wine so they could sell apps for windows and linux users would still buy them. Now say Red Hat licenses it from M$ to bundle it with every distro. This app must be sold and not given away.

Now say RedHat inter twins this app throuout thier flavor of Linux. You can no longer trade this flavor freely. I am sure you will shoot holes through this example. But my point is this. Do you think it is possible that the GNU license can be twisted or worked around?

Micro$haft is now saying they have a soft spot for linux. They are saying they see some of thier business model in the Linux circles.

Wine is open source wineX is not because they use some DX stuff from MS that they had to pay for. Linux is getting bought, sold, sued. Big buisness wants a peice of linux and it's going to get it.

But hey there is always BSD.

There are some distros that stick to the belief they will only include software that corresponsed to free licensing, so while some distros may be caught in legalese down the road, there is still hope.

I think if I could pick any large corporation to by linux, it would be Novell, so I am happy w/ that and look forward to what they will do w/ SuSE.

My vision of the future...

There will ALWAYS be a load of free *nix distros out there.
Some better than others, purely depending on the purpose.
On the other hand, there will emerge more and more appz that are NOT published under GNU license.
This will lead the future of *nix systems into two separated ways:
One way leading into the purely commersially produced softwares for *nix systems.
And one way leading to a non-profit development of software, developed by skilled coders and idealists.
Sooner or latter, the guys running their free distro's will get their hands on the comersially developed software for *nix systems and the whole comersially developed softwares for *nix systems will start to meet the same destiny as the softwares produced for Win.
Once again.. every teenager will have a shitload of CD-R's crammed with warez.
Only, this time... it's not Win-warez.


PS!
I do indeed know that there are a lot of comersiall appz for *nix systems today. I'm only saying there will be loads more, and corporations will want to flood the market with all sorts of sh*it for the *nix systems. Just like the Win-app market is today.

http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/03nov/uf006152.gif

i think one of the biggest drawbacks in linux is that there isn't enough games for it. even though there are a bunch, no real good one's. and that's what tons of ppl are using computers for now. i think once these developers realize that there's money to be had in a linux environment, they'll start dishing some out. or at least a greater number of ports to linux.//

Well, with the GNU in a pllace Linux will always remain free. The distributors have to make the source code available if they want to sell a distribution. I'm not too happy with Novell buying SuSe though, I mean, this is the company that brought us Netware. Last time I saw netware on a computer I had admin rights in 5 minutes. Maybe thats jus my experience with Novell. But big companies are kind of good for linux as long as it still remains free. Anybody seen the Linux commercial from IBM? The one with the little kid. Thats a reallly good commercial and wouldn't have been possible withoutt a big company. I see the Dell is also shipping out servers with Linux installed. This next yeat should be huge for Linux. I think one of the reasons that we'll see a lot more big companies get involved is that for the last 15 years everybody depended on Windows. There was no choicee and Microsoft pretty much dictated the direction in which computers would go. But now, any company can have their own Linux distribution and put it on their computers for free and lower the price without having to deal with licences and inferior MS software. Well, only time will tell what happens.