“Has anybody noticed the pricing models that companies use
when selling Open Source Software and Free Software? After
looking around at Best Buy, I became convinced that some of the
Linux distributions were being sold by a company’s finance
department — not by anyone who cares about the Free Software
spirit.”
“Convinced that this was merely a problem with Best Buy, who was
selling Red Hat Linux 6.1 for $79.95, I went to the source of this
issue, Red Hat’s online store, and found that they did indeed sell
it for $79.95. This, as was confirmed by many people I have talked
to, is absolutely incredible, not to mention insane. Granted, they
also sell a $29.99 version and a $149.99 version that are the
“base” and the “professional” versions, respectively. 150 bucks for
a Linux distribution largely based on Free Software? Why would
anyone want to spend more for an operating system than they would
for Windows, especially one that is supposedly free?”