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Linspire CEO Considers CNR for Ubuntu

Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri Mar 03, 2006 04:51 AM
from the open-minds dept.
Linux Business Software Linux
bored2k writes "Kevin Carmony, President and CEO of Linspire, Inc., is using the Ubuntu Forums to ask for input and explain why he thinks a popular and heavily focused on usability distribution like Ubuntu needs Linspire's $20 per-year CNR service. From what he says, both him and Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical/Ubuntu's founder) like the idea. Would CNR honestly help Ubuntu grow, or is it just a scheme to cash in on it's success?"
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Linspire CEO Considers CNR for Ubuntu 25 Comments More /

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  • Free (Score:3, Insightful)

    by omeg (907329) on Friday March 03 2006, @04:54AM (#14841348)
    Nonsense. Ubuntu is free, and will always be free. Their principles state that there can't be "extra" versions that cost money in addition to the free version, too. CNR is nice, but it's not Ubuntu.

    • Re:Free (Score:4, Informative)

      by Raphael (18701) <quinet.gamers@org> on Friday March 03 2006, @05:05AM (#14841371) Homepage Journal
      Their principles state that there can't be "extra" versions that cost money in addition to the free version, too.

      This does not prevent another company (Linspire) from offering optional services on top of Ubuntu. Just like any company can offer free or non-free software that can be installed on top of Ubuntu or on top of any other Linux distribution or even any other operating system.

      • Re:Free (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dhart (1261) * <dhart@sftowe r . com> on Friday March 03 2006, @06:24AM (#14841538)
        This also does not prevent another company like Impi Linux [impi.org.za] (65% owned by Mark Shuttleworth) from offering optional services on top of Ubuntu.

        Impi has a deal with CodeWeavers (the commercial contributors to WINE) and other commercial Linux players; I'd be surprised if they're not also talking to Linspire.

        It's an interesting dance between the FREE and commercial software worlds!

  • "nice" "summary" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Onan (25162) on Friday March 03 2006, @05:03AM (#14841366)
    And would it have killed you to throw in some mention of what the hell a "CNR" is?

    • Re:"nice" "summary" (Score:5, Informative)

      by caffeination (947825) on Friday March 03 2006, @05:11AM (#14841382)

      I've been reading Mr.Linspire's post about it. It's Click N Run software installation. It's like a frontend to apt/emerge/pacman, but more polished at both ends. Because it already has the billing system, and because Linspire isn't tied to purely free software, it can do things like proprietary game installations too.

      It has an extensive software repository too: it would provide *all* an average user would need, which is in fact more than any other package system can say (because of the non-free part).

      Unfortunately, its advantages are *all* in its non-free nature (though I'd install it in a flash if it became fast as well as fluffy).

      • its advantages are *all* in its non-free nature

        I agree, If another distro like Ubuntu should adopt this they shall only take the non-free parts of it. It would be nice to be able to pay say $40 to download and install a new game or program into /opt, of course with no DRM. I do not however wantsthis in my standard installation and it should be kept VERY separate as an addon.

        I don't no why they need distro support, Linspire could just have an installable .deb at their site for people to download to get acces

      • *all* an average user would need (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dpilot (134227) on Friday March 03 2006, @08:55AM (#14841831) Homepage Journal
        I have mixed feelings about something like CNR, and perhaps it's because I don't fully understand it.

        My impression is that it's like one-click shopping for sofware. Find software on a web browser, push a button, it gets installed, and you get billed. I guess that's ok, for someone who feels a little scared to type "emerge doom3". But that's not what I'd really like to get out of something like CNR.

        First off, I like the idea of a subscription service. In these days of security issues, it's downright stupid to adopt a sales-without-service model for computers. Any computer which will be connected to a network needs some form of regular service plan. My mom's system runs "emerge sync" weekly, "glsa-check" nightly, and emails the results to me. Even if glsa-check is only tied into the portage database, and thus only does something new weekly, at least the nightly emails will nag me into taking care of it. When there's a security issue, I ssh in and fix it. When I visit, I bring her system fully up to date. That's a "policy."

        I'd like to see some sort of update/security policy out of a service like CNR. In particular, something like emerge is very good about upgrading packages and identifying config files that may require updating. But it doesn't update them, it just tells you that it needs to be done. IMHO, THIS is where the real effort needs to be in a subscription service, in tweaking configuration files after update, yet not breaking the system.
  • No! You will never stop me from "compiling linux tar file"! (Google "Lindows Rock")

  • New to Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jgoemat (565882) on Friday March 03 2006, @05:16AM (#14841394)
    I wouldn't mind something like CNR (click-n-run) being available. I'd probably shell out the $20 a year also. I like Ubuntu a lot, but it took me about 2 hours the first night to be able to play and rip MP3 files. I don't want to install the newest JDK from SUN either because I don't really know how or if it would interfere with Ubuntu. I tried installing the new Firefox 1.5.0.1 over 5.10's default 1.0.7 and hosed it pretty good, I couldn't install or remove firefox then. I was finally able to get it working by doing an uninstall and then manually removing the /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox directory, then doing an install again. Now I just run 1.5 from a separate directory. It would be worth $20 just to save me an hour of messing around and it would already have saved 4-5...

    What I want to know is why Sun doesn't get together with the Ubuntu team to create a package for the new JDK 1.5. They have a binary installer for Linux, why not have a '.deb' file for Ubuntu? It's free, you just have to click-through Sun's license to get it...

  • Not bad at all. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by miffo.swe (547642) <daniel.solle@se> on Friday March 03 2006, @05:25AM (#14841420) Homepage Journal
    There are som things open source just cant supply legally. MP3, WMA, and some other media formats are amongst those. To be able to get those from CNR would be wonderful. CNR can license those things in another way than an open source dist can. It would be a nice complement and make it easier for the users.
      • The joy of software patents. MP3 is a patented format. Ubuntu, SuSE and Fedora Core respect this. Slackware and Arch evidently do not.

      • Re:Not bad at all. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by miffo.swe (547642) <daniel.solle@se> on Friday March 03 2006, @06:39AM (#14841562) Homepage Journal
        "Why can the less commercial distros get away with such treasonous blasphemy in this post 9/11 world?"

        Because they can be subject to legal action at any time if they include support for mp3, wma and whatnot. A hobby distro maker might take the chance but RedHat management would be liable for suits from its shareholders if they do something illegal on purpouse.

        Software patens suck but until they are gone we have to live with them. CNR makes that pretty easy for the end user.

  • Good idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Guspaz (556486) on Friday March 03 2006, @05:26AM (#14841421) Homepage
    apt-get is darned easy to use, but there are many things available through CNR that aren't in the apt repositories. It is certainly a nice supplement.

    Look at it this way; it is optional. If you don't want it, you are in exactly the same situation as before. If you do want it, you get something extra. It is a win-win situation; you either ignore it, or benefit from it.

  • why can't it be both? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xtifr (1323) on Friday March 03 2006, @05:29AM (#14841425) Homepage
    > "Would CNR honestly help Ubuntu grow, or is it just a scheme to cash in on it's success?"

    Why can't it be both? Sheesh, you guys are so narrow minded! :)

    I have zero personal interest in this, even though I like Ubuntu, but I can imagine many people who might find it useful.

    One thing that I would be interested to see is if they can make CNR work (for its target audience) without Linspire's terrible always-run-as-root misfeature.
  • Commercial user support services, like Linspire's Click and Run service, and non-freely redistributable code, such as proprietary software and plugins, should not and in most cases cannot be included on Ubuntu's CD/DVD distributions.

    However, there is no reason why Ubuntu could not host Digitally Signed Shell Scripts ( DSSS ) on their website, and by default, include a MIME setting so that web-browsers will pass the script along to a plugin that checks that it has been signed by Ubuntu before executing the shell script. The script would then perform the one click download and install of the required software. The advantage of this is that the DSSS could be linked to by any Ubuntu website, FAQ , help, page etc.

    Two precondition:
    1) Ubuntu should not preselect any one service over another, but include scripts to install competeing services.
    2) Any Ubuntu "affiliated service" that wants a Ubuntu DSSS would be required to sign an agreement to not use it to install any badware [stopbadware.org].

  • $20 per year per what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by advocate_one (662832) on Friday March 03 2006, @09:19AM (#14841923)
    Computer, User or household...

    I have six Ubuntu boxes at home, would I be expected to pay $120 per year or would I be able to get away with just the one CNR subscription for the household?

  • Hrmmmm (Score:5, Informative)

    by brunes69 (86786) <slashdot@keiGAUS ... g minus math_god> on Friday March 03 2006, @09:48AM (#14842036) Homepage

    CNR for $20 / year for outdated software.

    Or I can use Klik [atekon.de] for free, which does the same thing, is constantly up to date, and is guarenteed to never interfere with my system since all the packages are installed in theor own chroot directories.

    Why doesn't Ubunto adopt Klik? Is it just not as well known?

    • Ubuntu can use Klik. Most Debian based distros can. There's nothing else for Ubuntu to do.

      Linky [ubuntuforums.org].

      But there's still the problem of obtaining completely legal DVD playing and such.
    • If a program called "Skype" can take off, or people will buy cars that have all kinds of entirely meaningless names, what can't Ubuntu be successful?

        • Oh... so it means "Mensch". And yes, you see, we do have this concept in traditional western culture.

          What part of Yiddish do you consider "Western Culture" ? While there's been a minority of Jiddish-speaking people in "the West" for quite a few centuries, it's still a minority.

          Or did you mean that while there's a Yiddish word that is similar in meaning to Ubuntu, and you couldn't find a word in English or another big European language, that doesn't matter, because Jesus talked a lot about how nice it'd be

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