Saw an interesting article by Brian Proffitt, a Managing Editor at Linux Today. In his article titled. Maybe We Should Charge For Linux, he raises the issue of price and quality in the minds of many consumers.
While I agree that price does not always indicate quality (take a long look at LANE Furnishings furniture products at some high end store, they really are high cost crap or look at M$ Vista), I do feel that the problem is not we must charge a fee for something to make it look good attitudes. The problem is educating the consumer as to the value and quality of the product before introducing the cost of said product. We, the F/OSS community tend to talk about the open qualities of the product, no one but those who are actively involved in using and creating, yes even selling, really understand what that freedom actually is. We need to change our approach from talking about the cost and freedom's to demonstrating the power, functionality, and style of our operating systems.
When many of my students come to see me during my office hours, they are surprised to see that I am running a Unix environment in both my lab and office (still not sure why this surprises them, I mean after all, the whole department (Ag.Eng) runs various Linux distro's AND commercial Unix environments...could always be that they are Juniors and just getting into their major for the first time).
A while back, Novell released a few Linux commercials that spoofed the Mac-PC commercials that I think prove the point I am trying to make. Take a look when you have chance.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rtp5gNhBZgo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GVOnFdMf0RU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NkFQVcl62qo
More to follow later...
