'Commercial Partners'

[sean]

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:43:59 -0500
"Eric S. Raymond" <esr at thyrsus.com> wrote:

> You're telling me RHEL isn't making money?

Not from Fedora.

> No misrepresentation here.  I've laid out the logic very clearly -- 
> Red Hat has a business decision to make about whether it (still)
> wants the desktop and what it's prepared to do to get it.  It ties
> into a larger issue about what the Linux community needs to do to
> thrive under competitive pressure, which *is* a question for Fedora.

You do know that Red Hat has products designed specifically for
the commercial desktop right?   And Fedora isn't even a product
sold by Red Hat.

> Well, I've been right about this sort of thing before, and I've
> continued to pay attention.  You're living in an industry
> significantly shaped by the fact that I got some key market analysis
> right and then addressed the implied problem, and a lot of VCs and
> CEOs and investment bankers listen *very* respectfully when I talk.
> 
> This doesn't make me infallible, of course, but it does mean betting
> that I'm wrong this time is not something to do casually.

Nobody is betting that you're wrong.   There is absolutely no doubt
you're correct that a pure open source Linux desktop can not compete
directly with Windows.   However, it's also quite likely that
Linux + proprietary drivers and apps still can't compete in that
space.

Anyway, none of that has anything to do with Fedora.

Sean