D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] Distros (WAS: Looking for a new printer)

 

On 15/12/11 07:49, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> 
> What I find irritating is the insistence on people using Red Hat and the
> insistence of software venduh's only supporting Red Hat. I recently had
> to install FlexLM on a Debian server... Didn't work as RH are now
> dicking about with basic libraries making them non portable without some
> fiddling (linking ld-lsb to ld-linux)

Evils of proprietary software. If it were free it would probably be in
Debian already.

FlexLM always sucked, but then licensing software is by definition an
anti-feature so it is bound to suck.

It works - you can only use the software for the number of seats you
paid for.

It doesn't work - you can't use the software you've paid for.

The Met Office had this pain, of course you paid per section, or per
project, but it was sensible to share licences as widely as you could
(as not every piece is in use every second of the day, projects don't
last for ever), meaning of course you might run out of licenses on the
projects that paid for it. Of course the software was designed to
support the vendors licensing needs not the end users.

HP did their own licensing software at one point based on DCE, it was so
painful they eventually just waived licensing for the software that had
previously used it for us, even at a list price of several thousand per
seat.

The secret is not to use proprietary software, then there is no
licensing software, and no risk of exceeding license agreements that are
enforced by other means.

-- 
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq