Linspire’s Click n run is now free
First, Linspire released the freely available “freespire” release of their operating system (based on debian linux). Now, users will no longer have to pay an annual subscription for the click n run service. That’s now available for free as well. There is a writeup here. Previously the annual subscription fees were $20/$50 per year depending on service level. This does not mean all software through cnr is free, there is commercial software available there for a fee. I know that not long ago there was some talk about opening up cnr (click n run) to other distributions, possibly starting with debian based distros such as ubuntu.
This approach may pave the way for those kind of agreements. If it is an open service I can see more vendors being interested in providing clients to access the service and deal with the easy purchase and install of commercial software through cnr.