I agree that the use of the phrase "supposedly 'free'" is a little disingenuous, but the article does go on to speak of using Linux in the corporate environment, where service contracts are par for the course. I like the idea that Ubuntu would be completely free for us to employ in our development/test environments without worrying about per-cpu license costs, with the production servers being under contract. This makes a lot of sense in an environment where you'd like to be able to test out different deployment strategies.
I've installed Kubuntu under vmware, and am waiting for my wife to sign off on me installing it elsewhere. I like it. We're a Fedora household at the moment though.
Exactly,
One of the reasons that *butu typ distributions are not taking off on the servers is because when placed in a striaght cost comparison whit a stable RHEL or SUSE they dont offer enough to counter the quality of support you can get from Red Hat or Novell..