Re: gEDA-user: More footprint stuff

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

> Well there is another angle... Assume you want to deploy 50 machines
> running Synopsys VCS for example, you have now spent a lot of money on
> VCS licenses from Synopsys and they might only support you if you run a
> specific Linux distribution. That happens to be RHEL AS in some cases
> that I'm aware of.
> 
> You will now have spent quite a bit of money on copies of RHEL for all
> these machines, just to be on the platform "supported" by your tool
> vendor. In this case a free copy of RHEL might come in handy for some
> of those machines since it will look exactly like the supported
> version of RHEL. You could now just buy one copy of RHEL and have 49
> machines running an identical "free" copy of RHEL.

I understand that's a common trick, even using RHEL.  You have 50
identical machines.  The sysadmin owns one.  You buy 1 copy of RHEL,
and tie its support contract to the sysadmin machine.  You install it
on all 50 machines.  If you have a problem somewhere, you just
reproduce the problem on the sysadmin machine and then call Red Hat.

You don't need to download an off-brand version of RHEL to do this.

The basic problem with software is explained by Capitalist Economics
101:  Software's marginal cost of reproduction is basically nil, so
in a ideally competitive market its price will tend over time to
zero.  Ways to get around this iron law of economics are:

*  Disrupt perfect competition, e.g. somehow become a monopoly, or
   prevent customers from having a real choice in the market place.
*  Keep the market in flux via research and/or constant introduction
   of new features/products, so that prices can never asymptote all
   the way to zero.
*  Don't sell software.  Give it away as a loss-leader for some other
   product which doesn't have zero cost of reproduction.

You can see all three methods at play in the real world all the time. 

Stuart