ElfNet.org

I’ve been a bit of an open source fanboy for quite a few years now, the benefits of free and community supported software have always been very clear to me along with knowing I’m using something that’s open and not hiding anything nasty inside it.

Today I opened Ubuntu 10.10′s Ubuntu Software Centre and thought I’d give a new and featured text editor a go, I know what you’re thinking.. there can be only one (text editor) but vi’s been working quite hard recently and needed a break.

The text editor in question was named UltraEdit and after a hefty install I was surprised to see that I only had 30 days of free use before the application was either disabled or nagware.  This left me feeling like I was using Windows again.  Notice the price shown in the Ubuntu Software Centre on the UltraEdit page.  Yup, that’s right, free!

Is this what the future holds for Linux’s most popular and successful distro?  I know it’s not going to work for me.

Being a developer I can understand and appreciate that people need to earn a living and there’s nothing wrong with that but I feel this doesn’t go with what Ubuntu or open source software in general is about.  In recent years we’ve seen an increasing amount of companies generate their revenue via advertising (Mozilla) and support (RedHat).

This seems like a much better way to do things and certainly has my vote.  I  see the commercialisation of Ubuntu as two steps backwards and one step closer to being just a second rate Windows alternative.  Let’s hope this isn’t going to become a trend.