ZDNet: Caldera chief says Linux needs profit to thrive

Jul 04, 2001, 23:00 (66 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Martin Veitch)

Caldera's Ramsom Love defends his firm's decision to charge for Linux on a per-seat basis, and he reaffirms his opinion that the GPL isn't that good for business.

"Ransom Love, chief executive of Caldera International, caused a stir recently when he said he was sympathetic to Microsoft's view that the GNU General Public Licence that governs much open source development restricts business growth. In an interview with IT Week, Love said that although some stories that reported his remarks were incorrect, he still believed that more flexible licence models were needed for companies to grow and compete for enterprise business."

"'We will give technology back to GNU, but being able to charge is the only way to get Linux into the enterprise back office,' Love said. "Freedom without any control is not good. The constitution gave the U.S. balance and it prospered -­ we need to do that with open source and have some guidelines. GNU was never designed to be a business model, just a development model.'"

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