[LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities

[Jim Thompson]

On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Maddog wrote:

>> And it will change.   I've been doing hotel WiFi in various  
>> guises  since 1998.   Wayport had over 1,000 hotels when I left.    
>> It will  change in Hawaii slower than elsewhere because there is  
>> no business  requirement driving the hotels here.  Hawaii is a  
>> resort  destination.  People come here to play.  That said, even  
>> Disney's  hotels are going free wireless.
>
> Good point.
>
> I would love to see it change here I just don't see the hotels  
> driving it. They are too bent on making a dollar off of it.

Buy me beer sometime, and I'll tell you the tales.  Things like the  
VP of Marketing for Wyndham wanting to invent a way
to project ads on the surface of water in your toilet bowl.   (My  
response, "You want a heads-down display?" didn't win me any friends  
that day.)  Same guy wanted to charge a percentage of the contents  
protected by the in-room safe.

> Maybe that's why we are the priciest resort destination. Anyway,  
> change will be slower than you or I ever imagined here IMHO.

Actually, I'd bet that the first real downturn will bring a scad of  
"free wifi" from the hotels as they panic, especially in the lower- 
end chains. The primary metric for hotel management is REVPAR,  
(REVenue Per Available Room), and the primary inputs to REVPAR are  
occupancy and the rack rate.   As soon as a lack of Internet services  
(and most people would rather connect via WiFi) is perceived by hotel  
management as a primary (or even secondary) cause for a drop in  
occupancy or having to discount the rack rate (in order to fill the  
rooms), it will be installed, and it will be free-to-guest.   I saw  
this happen first in the extended stay space, where the guests would  
preferentially book rooms where they had a T1 connected to in-room  
Ethernet, and then would stay where it was "free to guest" (bundled  
into the price of the room).

Then Wyndham started giving away IP networking if you were part of  
their affinity program in an effort to attract folks away from  
Marriot and Starwood.  It worked, so Marriot went free-to-guest in  
those segments where they had to compete (Courtyard, Residence Inn,  
Spring Hill Suites, Fairfield Inn and Towne Place Suites).  Wingate  
and other chains followed suit.  Hilton turned up their "Garden Inn"  
chain (as free to guest).  Then LaQuinta (who had been refusing to  
even pay attention to offering Internet access) went and installed in  
every hotel (chain-wide) and turned it all on ... for free.   Why?   
Because their hand was forced.

Yes, you still pay in the higher-end brands, but most of the people  
who stay in these hotels aren't the kind who live-and-die by access  
to their email/Exchange and back-end (VPN-protected) applications.

And, oh, btw, I managed to keep all of Wayport's airport  
installations (some of which cost nearly $500,000 to install) as  
'free' for the longest time.   It was easier to treat it as a  
marketing expense than to make the changes to the billing system to  
accommodate how the airport authorities wanted to 'split' the meager  
fees.   And yes, we could see real results in folks who used the  
(free) WiFi at the airport in-turn preferentially staying at Wayport  
hotels.   Then we got the new Neanderthal CEO who insisted that the  
world would not "go free" or "go 802.11" (despite clear evidence to  
the contrary) and the rest is history.    His "big deal" now is WiFi  
in McDonalds, and that deal has several provisions which allow  
McDonalds to turn it on 'for free' when they so desire.

> I'd love to see a free model that could make it here, I guess I am  
> just too skeptical or cynical or something like that. Besides even  
> if the hotels come around, you have the politicians to deal with!

The politicians don't own the hotels, so they have little say.

Part of what makes dealing with hotels complex is that you have  
several parties to deal with.  You have people who own hotels  
(REITs), people who manage hotels (Benchmark, Interstate, Outrigger,  
WestCoast), people who brand hotels (Hilton, Marriott) and people who  
build hotels.   Sometimes one party will fill more than one role.   
You've also got they guys in the back-rooms of the REITs who are  
literally playing "Monopoly" flipping hotels in and out of the  
portfolio.

Moreover, it costs money to be able to charge money.   Shall I wax  
eloquent about PMS interfaces, credit card charge-backs, and the size  
of the customer support department you need to be able to deal with  
several thousand locations?  Want to know how small those (and other)  
issues get when you >don't charge<?

And yes, hotel managers are a capricious bunch.

Just to keep the linux content 'up', Wayport used an on-property  
(custom debian distro) linux machine (we called it a 'nmd') at every  
location, and still does.   You put 1,000 PeeCees in the world in  
wildly dispersed locations, with every one responsible for carrying  
money back to the mothership and see how you start to look at the  
problem.

Then start to deal with 40 or more Windows boxes that you've *never  
seen before* attached to the hotel network every night, all with  
their own unique collection of spyware and viruses, and some of whom  
are piloted by ... well, lets just call them 'bad actors' who are out  
to damage the network, send spam, or download things that are  
prohibited, which result in subpoenas from various law enforcement  
agencies (up to and including the FBI).   (*)

It turns out that having the source code, and being able to make  
changes to it (fixing bugs, changing behavior, etc), and then  
distribute these changes easily (and at no charge) is a "Good  
Thing" (tm).

Jim

(*) Back to the subject, if you don't bill, you don't have to keep  
the information around to justify the billing, and, as a result, the  
FBI (and other LEAs) know to just not bother to ask.