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Ximian Adds Subscription
from the getting-it-fast dept.
Nat Friedman of Ximian points out that the introduction of the subscription service doesn't mean a reduction in the availability of free downloads, from Ximian and the 40 associated mirror sites. "We've actually grown the pipe by 500% over the past 4 to 6 months," he says. "We also have a mirror coordinator." He cites ever-increasing numbers of Red Carpet sessions as the reason for introducing a subscription; November alone saw three quarters of a million sessions.
That number seems likely to increase, in part because of Ximian partnerships with companies like HP, now shipping a preview release of Ximian Gnome on HP-UX, but also because the Red Carpet software update system no longer requires Ximan Gnome; Friedman passed along this link to distribution-specific static binaries which work with other distributions as well.
Despite new servers and more bandwidth, Friedman asserts that some users downloading software for free will inevitably hit servers at times "when they're getting 8k downloads and they'd rather be getting 50k, and that's really who the subscription is for."
Er (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget about it if you use KDE (Score:4, Interesting)
1) KDE's menu loses various programs like gimp, gphoto, etc.... (because the RPMS are now labeled *-ximian.*
2) It breaks KDE-pim rpm, basically you cant run KpilotDaemon anymore
3) I forget what else, but there are more.
anyways, thats just my 2 cents about the service.
Too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Too expensive, I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with their strategy of charging, no problem there. In fact they should charge for their services. But they need to come up with a better pay model. Maybe charge more monthly for corporate upgrades, less for home users.
Parent
Yet another reason to stick with Debian (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nice that even in this increasingly commercialised Open Source world, that there's still a few idealists left.
Is Debian the SecretOS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every couple of weeks I pop open KPackage and use the debian servers to and shop around for upgrades. If I ever find myself needing software I don't have... I go to KPackage.
I don't understand. Why does Ximian need to charge money for bandwidth and Debian not? Are their operating costs a lot higher? I think it must be because Debian is not-for-profit so people must feel more responsability to make donations. I just don't feel philanthropy towards a for-profit business.
Just some thoughts.
-pos
Parent
Re:Is Debian the SecretOS? (Score:3, Insightful)
They are: nobody is mirroring Ximian (not for free, at least) the way is done for Debian.
Also, with the money you give them, Ximian has to pay for people developing and packaging the software, not only bandwidth. This is also work that Debian volunteers do for free.
I just don't feel philanthropy towards a for-profit business.
Their not asking your charity. They are trying to set-up a business model, compatible with free software ideas. Definively NOT an easy task.
I think that however they should charge the actual download of the packages, rather than a monthly fee for the _possibility_ of doing it.
Stuck with bugs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stuck with bugs? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Double Standard... (Score:3, Troll)
If MS was to institute this sort of plan, the response would not be "can't fault a company for trying to make money". Granted, they already make enough money as it is, but if you're going to be critical of MS for considering subscription-ware, you ought to be critical of Ximian.
Of course, the updates are still free, but the automatic service costs. Of course, with MS this fact would be completely overlooked and the flaming would commence.
All that said, I think it is very valid to charge for this. For home users, this is only a mild inconvenience, manually updating is both fast enough and mostly trivial. If you are more adventuresome, you can rig an auto-update setup with scripts and cron. Where this really shines is for large deployments (companies) that could afford the subscriptions anyway.
Re:Double Standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. What I want is one. Count them. One server getting those downloads and being able to push out the updates to my clients. That way I pay for one download but all my machines get patched.
For large deployments, what I really need is the ability to automagically mirror a Ximian server. And the second I can do that I only need one subscription. Red Carpet, at least for how I've got it configured, is useful at the consumer level and at that level $120/year is pricey for what you are getting. Call me a cheap bastard but I can't consider this service until it costs about a third of what they are currently charging.
Re:Double Standard... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no double standard here. Ximian gives away all of its software for free. MS doesn't. With Ximian you can pay for a faster download.
But you knew that and were trolling right?
Parent
$119.40 per year (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you buy every release of Red Hat Linux, it won't cost you $120 per year. And that's an entire operating system (with GNOME included!), not just a pretty GUI.
Remember, folks, it's still legal to mirror this stuff. It's all GPL.
--Patrick, who will continue paying $0 per year for software
Re: Mirroring... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you've hit on a key point here. The $9.95/month seems to attempt to cover bandwidth costs paid by Ximian.
Perhaps some sort of distributed mirroring system needs to be implemented for smaller companies that don't have $billions$ coming in every year to spend on bandwidth.
Re: Mirroring... Gnutella Network! (Score:4, Interesting)
This also solves the legitimacy problem that peer-to-peer systems often have. If the files are legal to redistribute as all GPL'd code is, then pow! - we have a clear non-infringing use for a network like this. Sorry Jack Valenti, networks are for kids.
It's a win-win. What's really needed is a list of projects that need to be shared from people's idle gnutella collections, so that the sharing can happen with a modicum of intelligence- or perhaps even just an announcement on the download page asking users to pledge to share the files they download (or some portion of them) on peer to peer networks like the gnutella network in order to guarantee their widespread distribution, and a place to enter their email address so they can be notified when a newer version has been released so they can start sharing the newer one. You probably can't offer a discount for this or anything since
If bandwidth is their only problem, I think this is a solvable problem so long as the content they are distributing truly is free.
Please, someone with more time and experience, steal (or hire me to implement
Bryguy
Parent
Re: Mirroring... Gnutella Network! (Score:3, Informative)
Everything Over Freenet(EOF) http://eof.sourceforge.net/ - they have a version of apt-get running over Freenet already.
World Free Web
http://wfw.sourceforge.net/
I just read ximian webpage (Score:3, Informative)
In addition to the basic updating service freely available to Red Carpet Users, updating is also delivered through two premium subscription services:
Red Carpet Express provides users with priority high-bandwidth access to Ximian applications and leading third-party software for faster installations and updates.
Red Carpet CorporateConnect provides centralized Red Carpet updating to corporations and workgroups, including special features which allow system administrators to distribute their own in-house applications to their users - quickly and securely - through the Red Carpet interface.
So, it seems that there's still a 'normal' version, for use with 'normal' programs, using 'normal' server and a commercial one, with high-bandwith servers and some commercial soft.
No problems, just use the one you prefer depending, pay if you want/can and use the free version otherwise.
Of course, let's hope that there will still be free updates available.
Must be better than Transgaming... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Must be better than Transgaming... (Score:4, Insightful)
Once again, I declare that the net needs a micropayment system (with a warranty, if that's applicable at all). If you want to download 20 megs worth of updates, then pay for that 20 megs of bandwidth (let's say 2 dollars). If you spend the next year without needing or wanting an update, then you don't disburse another penny and life is good. This model is flawed because it will encourage them to release 'fat' patches, but there surely is a way to allow a reasonably honest and fair system for all.
Parent
This came up Monday and the verdict was... (Score:3, Flamebait)
Actually, this parallels the story on Monday "VPN Clients Not Allowed On Residential Service"
EXCEPT then it was unacceptable for a cable company to charge extra for a business account
Again, my criticism then was not of people dailing in from home to remote a server, my criticism was of people saying
"YEAH, I use it all day long telecommuting for business but I don't want to be charged a business rate. My business can't afford THAT! They have no right to differentiate me based on my use or time of use"
Now Ximian differentiates their service levels and
*ironic wistle as I walk away shaking head*
Re:This came up Monday and the verdict was... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that cable companies essentially have to intrude on your network and figure out what you're running in order to offer their service. Ximian's service is a natural and reasonable one to offer. There is no 'customer policing' to make sure it works.
Also, I have no problem with the cable companies differentiating based on usage, but that should be based on usage, not what software you happen to be running. If they want to rate limit you and charge you extra to have it lifted, that's great. What I have a problem with is them telling you what you can and can't have on your network.
Essentially cable companies are trying to 'police' users for business mistakes they made. They shouldn't have assumed that all users would be docile downloading consumers, and structured their business and pricing plans accordingly. Instead, they want to blame consumers for their glaring error in offering unlimited bandwidth to home users isn't quite so apparent.
In short, the situations are not comparable.
Parent
What's the big deal (Score:4, Interesting)
As for myself, my time is actually worth something so I'm more than happy to spend 10 bucks a month on a useful service that gets my updates to me faster.
Re:What's the big deal (Score:3, Funny)
It costs 34 cents to send mail.
This changes a lot of things (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux needs an automatic updater like Red Carpet. Why? First, because of WindowsUpdate. It's quick, easy, and on the mark when updating the OS and MS's addons. You've bought the OS, sure, but the updates are free. At $9.95/month, now you have a free OS that ends up costing you the same as the full version of XP Home after just over a year and a half.
Second, because updating Linux without a tool like that is just impossible for the average user. People here often complain about the inaccessibility of MS updates to bug fixes and security holes, but at least they're in one place, on one site (even if you have to dig to see them), and usually end up on WindowsUpdate. How to the Linux Elite expect an average user to keep up with every possible package, dependency, bug fix, security hole and update? Linux's greatest strength, openness and diversity, is also it's greatest weakness. There is no central repository to keep your system running smoothly...except tools like Red Carpet.
What about for corporate situations? I'm telling you, Debian scares me, but a local apt-get cache for my users is looking more and more attractive every day.
Is this the new trend for Linux? "Yes, our OS is free (as in beer *and* speech!), but in the long run, it'll cost you more than Windows if you want to actually keep it updated." I dunno...that doesn't sound appealing to me, and it doesn't sound like it fits within the creedo that has been trumpeted for the last 10 years.
--SC
Re:This changes a lot of things (Score:3, Insightful)
People here often complain about the inaccessibility of MS updates to bug fixes and security holes, but at least they're in one place, on one site (even if you have to dig to see them), and usually end up on WindowsUpdate
If you use a distribution like RedHat, you also get all your updates and security fixes in one place -- redhat.com. Further, you can pay for up2date, just like Ximian premium, or unlike Microsoft you can pay zero and just download yourself.
The biggest problem with Ximian is that it doesn't quite provide that sort of one-stop shopping. For Gnome software it does a great job, but in my experience it lags behind or completely misses other software. For me personally, $9.95 a month is too much for Gnome-plus-some-other-stuff but for others it may be an OK price.
Even with Microsoft, if you want to keep track of all your software you have to go many places. Microsoft obviously won't provide you with upgrades for Adobe software but RedHat will update your GIMP. It is actually more plausible that RedHat (and similar distros) will provide you one-stop stopping for all your software updates than Microsoft, which actually doesn't quite have a monopoly on *all* windows software.
Mandrake Update (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a feeling that Ximian is on the way out the door...
*Cough*apt*cough* (Score:4, Informative)
Redhat apparently has some sort of tool (up2date or something) which performs a similar task.
red-carpet was pretty cool, but IIRC the Ximian gnome didn't get along too well with Debian (Mainly dependency naming issues IIRC) so I wiped it off my desktop and installed the standard gnome branch. I really can't tell the difference, either. And getting Ximian off my desktop was a much more miserable experience than it had to be, though this was more Debian's packaging system's fault than anything else. The dependencies cascaded and X and all the X programs ended up getting uninstalled too.
If I were in a corporate situation and getting paid for keeping a Linux network healthy, I'd set everyone up with Debian, have their apts pointing to a machine inside the company and either set them on a cron job or hack out some method of kicking off a apt update on a remote signal. Then I'd thoroughly test new packages before releasing them to the live apt server.
Time will tell if this subscription model works for Ximian. I suspect that in its current form, it will not.
Parent
Re:*Cough*apt*cough* (Score:4, Interesting)
Be careful about saying something like this. Too many people will take it literally.
One should never run a software upgrade unattended like this (trimmed and taylored by an IT department is one thing, somebody's local server or desktop is quite another). I know, I know, you take proper precautions with what gets puts in a crontab. Even for something like this, you're probably better off with the snippet:
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade --download
That way:
Personally, I go a little more crazy. I tend to do:
apt-get -qq update && apt-get -dqq upgrade && apt-get -sqq upgrade
(The shorthand is mostly for e-mail subject lines, so I get a reminder of what's going on.) In long terms, that's:
apt-get --quiet --quiet update && \
apt-get --download-only --quiet --quiet upgrade && \
apt-get --simulate --quiet --quiet upgrade
This way, I only get mail if something (like an install) needs to get done. I check my e-mail in the morning, and if something is pending, it gets taken care of.
This post is mostly a just-in-case post... someone might read the parent and think, "hey, that's a great idea!" (which they should ^_^). Hopefully they'll scroll a little bit before adjusting their crontab.
Parent
Possible better solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a chance. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm.
That's absurd. Imagine paying $10/month for each of GNOME, the kernel, your office suite, etc etc.
As another poster mentioned, that's $10 ($30, $40..) more than MS is asking for per month for automatic updates.
I'd actually think about paying $10/month for fast auto updates for the entirety of my distribution...it'd be nice to go to *one* site, make three clicks, wait for the download, and have my entire system up to date with the latest patches. Even better if it were done automatically.
But paying $10/month for one [albeit large] component of my system just invites others to charge for other components.
So much for avoiding the MS license if that happens, right?
Re:Not a chance. (Score:4, Interesting)
RedHat updates? Available. Loki Demos? Available via Red Carpet. StarOffice (with all the configs set up so that Evolution can launch .doc and .ppt files directly into SO)? Available. Opera? Available. The list goes on.
My point is just that you're not just paying for priority access for GNOME updates. You're paying for priority access to whole system updates.
In a way, Ximian is making a meta-distribution, and Red Carpet is what facilitates that... it allows them to add channels that contain most of the major downloads you might be interested in. If you're not interested in a particular app (let's say you don't want to use StarOffice), just unsub that channel.
You should try running it... it's a lot different (better, IMHO) than RHN. That's why I've already signed up.
Sujal
Parent
$120 a year for an update service??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Added to which, whats to stop aggresive mirroring from getting software out to free sites within hours of it being available to Ximian subscribers??? I just don't see the benefit.
The "New" Business Model (Score:5, Insightful)
We're all smart people. If there's one thing we should have learned about the dot-bomb era, it's that organizations (businesses, companies, hacker efforts, the red cross...) NEED MONEY TO STAY ALIVE. That's just how it is, people.
We have lots of control over organizations, simply by choosing who to support with our $. (Guess what? Ximian might be a good opportunity to further the cause.)
All of you people that are out there bitching about paying some small fee for good access, what don't you get about this? What is so hard to understand about needing $$$ to support the effort?
Money is a basic requirement for effectively bringing anything to the masses, be it charity, goodwill, and even open-source software.
Everyone bitching on here, take a step back and look at the big picture. You need to do your part. FYI, your part is NOT bitching about what amounts to a sustenance model for something you care about.
If you love and care about important stuff like this, suck it up, and spring for the 33 fucking cents/day it might cost you.
I, for one, have already signed up to pay the paltry $9.95/month to support something that I care about and love, which I don't want to go away.
Ximian desperately needs a REAL business model (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really see how Ximian is going to make it. At the end of the day they are really just another Eazel - a company with a neat product that you can obtain for free. There simply is not a compelling reason to give Ximian money.
The best advice I could give them at this point is to develop some truly useful and unique linux apps and sell them. People will pay for something they cannot get elsewhere if it truly enhances the utility of their system.
For example, I would pay for a Real JukeBox type system that united all of the functions of the various linux music programs in one nice package.
Parent
Re:The "New" Business Model (Score:3, Interesting)
What is so hard to understand about needing $$$ to support the effort?
KDE never asked me for any money for their efforts, and it's doing pretty damn good.
The Kompany sell proprietary software.
No-one forces you to buy it. No-one forces you to pay for Ximian's premium service. And your point is?
Absolutely untrue (Score:3, Interesting)
Presumably this could even make the free servers faster for users who choose not to subscribe, since the existing servers may be somewhat offloaded.
In any case, the same service exists in Debian -- and it covers the whole operating system, not only Gnome.
Price Discrimination (Score:3, Informative)
Like others, I wonder if the $9.95/month price is too high just for better download times. However, we should remember the basic theory of economic price discrimination (which is a morally neutral term in economics, by the way, unlike other forms of discrimination.)
The point of price discrimination is to divide your consumers into groups based on their willingness to pay. Let's say that the profit-maximizing price -- if only one price is offered -- is p0. Then if a firm offers two levels of service at p1 and p2 (with p2 the higher price), it is likely that optimal p1 is less than p0 and optimal p2 is greater than p0. The reason is that the higher-priced service is aimed at a particular group of service-sensitive/price-insensitive consumers, not at the "average" consumer.
Now, take p0 as the Microsoft price -- we would expect Ximian's p1 to be less that the MS price and it is: zero. Correspondingly, we might expect that p2 could be even higher than the MS price, as it arguably is. It seems to me that most consumers would prefer the Ximian solution -- at least you have a zero-price choice.
Of course, while this argument is in favor of a relatively "high" price for the premium service, the firm still has to worry that even the service-sensitive folks will "defect" to the low-price service. Unless they make the free service really bad, I still wonder if $9.95/month isn't too high. Perhaps they should go for a $10/quarter "Premium" service and a $10/month "Elite" that has further support benefits.
Frankly... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's worse, these ONLY support RPMs. There's nothing for SLP's, DEB's, perl modules, etc. Further, they generally only support one architecture (i386). Binaries for the 486, 586, 686, Athlon, etc, just don't seem to exist on these servers.
What is needed, IMHO, is a caching gateway for developers. A developer simply registers a directory, and forgets about it. (File-And-Forget). Every N hours, the gateway scans all registered directories, updates a database of who has the most recent version of what, and drops from its cache any out-of-date versions.
On receiving a request, the gateway would check it's cache for a copy. If it has one, it send the file. If it doesn't, it locates what server does have a copy, grabs it, caches it, then forwards it.
Dependency checking would be simplified, because this kind of server would have a record of damn near every RPM, DEB, SLP, perl module, etc, out there. If the dependency couldn't be met directly, it can always use something like Alien to covert a different package format to the one needed to meet the dependency.
Such a system would also be much cheaper to run, as you don't need a gigantic machine. Remember, you're not storing all the binaries on the computer, only the ones likely to be needed. You also don't need to administrate such a machine, to keep it up-to-date, as it updates itself, with the help of the developers themselves.
All you'd need is a decent network connection. Geant would do nicely. Failing that, someone could practically run something like this out of their home, especially if you allowed a peer-to-peer arrangement of gateways, so that no one connection is saturated.
IMHO, this would utterly negate the need for any kind of commercial update tool, and provide a universal updating system for most Linux platforms.
I paid my $99.00 (Score:4, Insightful)
service for over a year now. It saves me time and
keeps my software (including OS) up to date.
Although the main reason I paid is not for faster downloads, I paid because I want them to keep up the good work. Continue to develop useful software and release it as GPL. The faster downloads is just a bonus.
Rumor Control (Score:5, Informative)
Since we launched the Red Carpet service this past April, it has become immensely popular. In fact, usage of Red Carpet has grown over 500% since the service's inception, and we've had to scale our public server's network pipe accordingly. Today, hundreds of thousands of people use Red Carpet on a regular basis to keep their systems up to date. Almost since the day we launched it, we've had a number of users ask us to provide a subscription service to Red Carpet that would offer a higher level of bandwidth. That's what Red Carpet Express is.
Red Carpet Express is not a sign that we're backing away from our free Red Carpet service. As our userbase has grown, it has become harder for us to increase our available bandwidth -- and consequently our monthly colo bill -- to provide everyone with the fastest connection possible. And so, for the users who absolutely must have high speed all the time, there is Express. Red Carpet Express is made up of a new, dedicated network of machines located at major hubs, and doesn't cut into our free service at all. In fact, over the last few months, we have increased bandwidth to our free Red Carpet service dramatically as the userbase has grown.
Red Carpet Express is not a sign that we're backing away from our mirror network. We have a dedicated mirror coordinator who works with our over 40 mirror sites to make sure they have the latest content as quickly as possible. This isn't going to change with the launch of Red Carpet Express. In fact, I'd like to encourage those users of our free service to consider looking for a mirror site closer to them.
Anyway, we hope people give Express a shot. It's the perfect stocking stuffer!
Your explanation makes it even less compelling (Score:3, Interesting)
Red Carpet Express is not a sign that we're backing away from our mirror network.
So who are you actually appealing to? Red Carpet on its own in any form is only going to appeal to a fraction of users - those who perform their own major upgrades between distro versions. Now take this audience and reduce to only those who depserately need the highest bandwidth....so who exactly is this?
As it stands, it is incredibly easy to spoof your model - just sign up for one account and use it to distribute to free mirrors. The free sites would potetnially only be a half hour behind the paid update.
Re:Won't work (Score:3, Informative)
With Ximian you don't pay for updates. You only pay for the fastest-available access to them. Updates are still free.
With RedHat Network, you pay if you want to avoid having to manage your entitlements via a web page if you have multiple systems. You get the same bandwidth priority either way.
Re:Value added or just paying for bandwidth? (Score:3, Interesting)
While the content is all free, all you are paying for is faster/less conjested download. For example, in FP's case, you can spend the money on a 'personal server' that lets you download instantly, or wait in line for one of the FP mirrors to queue up.
In Gamespot's case, they provide the large downloads only if you pay them, but since these are mirrors of what's available on the gamemaker's site, they still offer the links to those.
Is this unreasonable? For the gaming sites, maybe, since there are probably some fanatic people that take a day off, click reload often until a demo is out so they can be the first to grab it and play it. For something like Ximian, I would rather see them divide the service into two parts: a 'critical' updates which should only be limited to security bugs that would be open and fast to all, and then the split servers for all other programs, ones for payed customers and ones for free downloads. Typically when you hear of a new bug, you want your patch ASAP, and this is not because your fanatic but because it's necessary; while probably waiting a short amount of time for the patch to come down the free-server side isn't a problem, security patches should be 'instantly' available regardless.
Re:Value added or just paying for bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
BANDWIDTH IS EXPENSIVE.
Okay? Hope that clears everything up
By allowing people to download stuff for free(although relatively slowly), they're still basically giving you money from their pockets.
So please, until you start providing servers with a 100Mbit connection to a good backbone, and provide all the bandwidth fees(thousands of dollars per month), then please don't bitch.
Parent
Re:Value added or just paying for bandwidth? (Score:3, Insightful)
What does it matter? They could charge $50 a month if they wanted. The question is quite simply: Do you feel it is worth it? If not, then don't pay it. If so, then pay it. Then Ximian will make marketing decisions based on the number of people that subscribe.
That's how capitalism works. You get to decide pricing indirectly, not directly!
Re:Value added or just paying for bandwidth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Jason.
Re:I hate to say it (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I hate to say it (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone think this might be bad news for RedHat?
Parent
Re:Ximian (Score:4, Interesting)
A month? For updates to Gnome and other products I need to purchase? I just can't see how $120/yr is a good value (ok $99.95 if I buy it a year at a time). Of course Redhat wants $240/yr per machine. Yes, I know bandwidth is expensive, etc, etc and Ximian needs to make money. I'm all for that. But the pricing seems a bit off. Hell - for $120 or $240 a year I can buy windows and still get updates to it (teh few there are ;) ) for free.
I'm not saying everything has to be free. But come on! For example - I've got 3 desktops (me and kids) and a laptop. All run Redhat. Do I have to buy subscriptions for each (I do with RedHat) That's $400/yr just to auto update my packages? I hate dependency problems as much as the next guy but that's nuts.
I agree with the poster - I'll be doing my upgrades overnight and send Ximian what I feel is fair value for the desktop and the service.
Parent
The bug in my ear (Score:3, Interesting)
"Red Carpet(TM) Express is a timesaving subscription service that provides end users with priority, high bandwidth Internet downloads and updates of Ximian(TM) and third party software hosted by Ximian."
I really, really hope this doesn't mean Ximian RPM releases will be delayed in the public servers. Narrower bandwidth, I don't mind much.