doughnuts on a fish hook

[Howard Owen]

On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 18:47, William Hooper wrote:

> It is my understanding that keeping multiple Errata trees for a long
> period is the problem that making RHLP a short life cycle product is meant
> to solve.  I imagine that many more dollars go into backporting patches
> than into answering phones.

However the costs break out, there's no doubt that Red Hat adds enormous value
and deserves to make a nice profit. I also have huge respect for them as the
company that has done the most for Free Software, and that includes the company
I'm presently employed by, who has been no slouch. My point might be better stated
thus: "If you can possibly afford to do it, Red Hat, you might consider offering
WS for zero dollars, and without support, just now. The strategic situation is
such that a stable, low cost desktop platform upon which large support organizations
can build very large scale deployments would do two things. First, it would 
accelerate adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop, a trend that is real and
growing. Second, it would ensure that _your_ platform is the most widely adopted
Linux desktop OS. This would of course give you enormous opportunities later, 
and you wouldn't even have to act like Microsoft to realize them."

And there's the point about the window (heh) of opportunity closing as soon as Microsoft
gets around to implementing some new feature that hard-nosed bean counters will
grudgingly (after much argument) admit is worth the cost of upgrading to Microsoft's
latest trojan horse, er, desktop OS. They are reading the same research reports up
there in Redmond. If you think they won't answer the threat to their desktop franchise
with the most vicious, focused and effective counter-attack they've ever mounted,
well, the world must look nice through those rose tinted glasses.

(That last was a general statement, Mr. Hooper. I have no idea what color your
lenses are, or if you have any 8)
 
-- 
Howard Owen                      "Even if you are on the right
EGBOK Consultants                 track, you'll get run over if you
hbo at egbok.com    +1-650-339-5733  just sit there." - Will Rogers