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Comment by devcpp | Hacker News Reader

I do. It's hard enough to bring people out of closed OSes while Ubuntu is free. I still think Canonical should do like many successful startups these days: make a large userbase and only then start to deploy the business model.

We're not going to bring many people to OSS if we make it as expensive as the system they're locked in. One more obstacle.

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"I still think Canonical should do like many successful startups these days: make a large userbase and only then start to deploy the business model."

But isn't that exactly what they are doing? Ubuntu has been around for 8 years now, would many startups last for 8 years without being profitable? And when should they start deploying their business model? When we are happy with it?

I think that many of us are being two-faced about Ubuntu. We want Linux to succeed, but not Ubuntu. We want to prove that you can make money from open source projects, but object to Ubuntu doing so.

But it is NOT as expensive as the system they're going to. Ubuntu is and always will be free. It's also open source. The majority of users are not thinking of freedom when choosing an OS and price is only part of the story. In the end, like it or not, Users choose OS's based on a number of factors, including the eco-system of the operating system, software availability, hardware and device support. etc etc. Ubuntu users are not getting locked in. They can still do whatever they like with their operating system once ubuntu is installed.

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