We have known for a long time that the price hidden in consumer PCs was silly. Now we know it is silly for servers, too, even though the price may not be hidden…
“They were driving prices down and it eventually broke the pricing model,” Hilf said. “We sell the software for $1,000 and these guys were selling the hardware for $300. It was silly.”
Right from the horse’s mouth. A licence for 2003 etc is around $1000 and they have the nerve to charge per-seat on top of that. Silly. Hilf was talking about cripple-ware, too. Really silly.
For anyone who does not know, you can install Debian GNU/Linux on your server for just the cost of downloading/labour. No licence fee. Not silly. Smart. That includes all the bells and whistles:
- GNU/Linux, the OS
- OpenSSH, a great tool for managing systems and clusters remotely
- Apache web server, a standard on the web
- MySQL database or PostgreSQL databases
- PHP server scripting for rapid development or tweaking of existing scripts
- SWISH-e, a good search engine
- see more at Debian
It just takes a few minutes to install all this goodness. You can obtain the software and install it in much less time than you can purchase a copy of that other OS. Then you can make it your own by customizing your site/services.
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