[ltp] Lenovo clarifies its stance on linux

[Andrew Barr]

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On Monday 05 June 2006 20:36, James Knott wrote:
> I find this curious.

It looks to me to be yet another verbal miscue on the part of Lenovo or at 
least the person quoted. "License" was probably a bad word to use. When we 
think of licenses, we think of Microsoft EULAs and paying lots of money for 
the actual bits themselves. More accurately, I think what Lenovo will do for 
customers is load the distro on the hard disk after the customer has 
purchased a service level agreement with a company like Red Hat or Novell 
(or, heck, maybe even IBM!). They just aren't going to act as resellers for 
these contracts.

I find the last part of the article, about the confusion of folks at Red Hat, 
kind of amusing. Sounds like Lenovo has a real PR blunder on their hands.

> What's to stop a customer from
> asking for any of the free download distros?

This guy was probably talking about corporate customers, who in all reality 
*want* "licenses" (again, bad word) from a vendor, because it entitles them 
to support and other value-add-type goodies. 

Remember, just about anything you see in the mainstream tech press 
is "corporate Linux", see my previous comments on what Linux support means to 
different groups [1]. A lot of what constitutes Linux news at sites like 
ZDnet is of absolutely zero consequence to many of the denizens of this list, 
unless of course your job is somehow related to Linux. I stopped reading the 
mainstream tech press on a regular basis almost a year ago.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's ten to midnight local time and I have a final 
exam tomorrow. :)

[1] 
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/2006-June/034075.html

- -- 
Andrew Barr | andrew.james.barr@gmail.com
http://www.oakcourt.dyndns.org/~andrew/

"And now for something completely different."
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