Re: *makes bitter face*
"The thing is that the paid-for-edition-which-funds-a-freebie thing still means there's a two-tier system: there are freeloaders, and there are Proper Users, the ones who paid for it, the real guys with the real product. Usually there is something else going on here, such as paid users get access to the support fora or something."
Well, sure, if you want to look at it that way, but...I didn't make any argument or claim about which approach is "better", that's not my point at all. My point was only ever frustration at Ubuntu acting like no kind of desktop Linux existed before they came along. If you want to argue that desktop Linux a rich guy gives you for free is "better" than desktop Linux with some kind of business model, sure, go ahead, but it's not an argument against my point, AFAICT.
I would just point out that the "rich guy gives it away for free" model has an obvious built-in flaw, which is that at some point the rich guy gets bored, or dies, or the big pile of money runs out. Canonical being a private company it is impossible to know a lot for certain about how this looks from the inside, but from where I'm sitting, it looks a lot like they've been cutting back on investment in the desktop side of Ubuntu for a while, and trying to come up with *some* kind of sustainable business model. There was a lot of noise about shopping it around to outside investors a few years ago, though I don't know where that went in the end, or if it's still going on.
(Liam knows this, but for anyone else following along, I now work for Red Hat, so am of course the furthest thing from an unbiased observer. Eat this comment with as large a pinch of salt as you like.)