Does Ubuntu's price dissuade people?

[mediax]

One thing that I suspect makes Windows users wary about Linux distros is receiving a home-brewed ISO cd with "Ubuntu 6.10" scrawled on it and being told "boot that in your machine". In the Windows world, that's widely perceived as so dangerous that it's almost taboo (all those viruses and worms waiting to destroy your pc!).

I think the ShipIt CDs are a terrific step to overcoming this - although I ordered mine with a healthy degree of scepticism ("Yeah right, free disks AND they pay the postage???"). How wrong was I?

I've now got a nice, professionally produced and packaged CD to pass on to potential converts, and it seems to get a lot more positive response.

[Hendrixski]

And when Kevin Carmony came here to explain why they were selling free software and not letting people know it was available for free a lot of us, including myself, argued it wasn't ethical. It's one thing--one of the arguments went--to charge for packaging or for support, but to not even let people know the non-pay-for option is available... that's sheer trickery!

But now, in this thread, we're realizing, a lot of people want to be tricked. They won't use the software at all if it's free. It's insanity, but maybe Kevin Carmony's right after all...

I don't think it's unethical at all, and I certianly wouldn't call it "tricking" people. People will buy a product that is right for them. And price is an important part of a product. Kevin Carmony has a lot of bad press in the Free Software movement, but he's not wrong. It's all about meeting peoples expectations, giving them what they want, even if all they want is a price tag. It's just as much a part of the product as the philosophy behind it.

Conversely, I think that not offering users the option to meet one of their product needs (the need to pay for it), is unethical.

[purdy hate machine]

"Pah must be made by haxX0rz with all their syNt@x 'nd pr0gr@mMiNg!" (Yes they say it exactly like that )

Has anyone else noticed people being put off by the lack of monetary cost?

So sell it to them for as much money as you can screw out of them, if they insist on talking like an imbecile you may as well treat them like one.

[Free software]

Well ofcourse, in America (I'll assume that's where you're from) people believe that if something doesn't cost obscene amounts of money, it must be made by communist scum, for communist scum, and isn't worth bothering with. I remember back in 7th grade my history teacher explaining to us the horrors of a universal health system.

What you should have done, is when they asked "How much", you should have said "only $75, way cheaper and better than Vista!". That way you would have converted some users, and made some money in the process!

I think it's FRAUD, if you take their money. What you have to do is to secretly return their money after they have installed Ubuntu.

[ninjaaron]

"I thought Linux was just a black screen with white text"

only when you want to get actual work done.

[cariboo]

You may have noticed this thread is over 5 years old, the audience of Ubuntu has changed quite a bit in that time. I'd suggest you start a new thread, with a link to this one, as this one is closed.