Delay? Looks bad for Fedora

Marc Schwartz MSchwartz at MedAnalytics.com
Tue Nov 4 19:39:45 UTC 2003


On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 12:33, Randy Vice wrote:

> Question is, now that RH has "dumped" me, should I trust them a second 
> time with RHE or go with Novell/SuSE for enterpise level support for my 
> home server?  Or will Fedora support be enough for my taste?  Guess time 
> will tell.  
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Randy

That is your choice. If you see it as being dumped, you are free to go
elsewhere, as is any customer of any company. You have a choice, as long
as the other vendors are also financially viable and around to provide
you that choice. We are just beginning to see the shake-out of the
commercial Linux market and it will take time for the dust to settle,
maybe a few years. Is RH taking a risk here?  Sure....but the bigger
risk is to do nothing.

People are hesitant when there is change, because change means
unknowns...

Fedora Support is community based. If you need to be able to call
somebody, then Fedora is not for you. Simple decision. That leaves you
with few other choices for paid professional support.

Novell/SUSE is an unproven commodity at this point, given Novell's less
than stellar past history with acquisitions. Maybe they will get it
right this time, maybe not. Management changes can result in fundamental
direction changes for companies, despite SUSE's past history. If you
think that this forum has a spectrum of opinion, go read SlashDot, where
all the KDE advocates are concerned about the Novell/SUSE/Ximian
triangle, SUSE users are concerned about Novell's ability to do this
well and yet others about a U.S. company taking over a European
distro....

Personally, I would rather see RH financially viable, rather than trying
to be everything to everybody. If that means that they have to give up
20% of their present market (or whatever that number is) to achieve that
goal, so be it.

I am a firm believer in Pareto's 80/20 Rule:

1. Develop a product to meet the needs of 80% of your target
marketplace. Meeting the needs of the other 20% will bankrupt you.

There is also something in business known as "opportunity cost". If I
have finite funds and resources, where do I put them? Do I allocate them
to something that has a small chance of being profitable or something
that has a larger chance of being profitable? Guess where I allocate my
finite resources?

The Linux desktop today is not profitable and until fundamental changes
take place in the market, that will continue to be the case. That goes
for the home web/ftp server market as well...

Those of us, myself included, who paid for RHN, more thank likely got
off cheaply, because it is my guess that the revenues from the larger
enterprise customers subsidized the costs for us small business users.
If the desktop/small business RHN service was stand-alone profitable, I
suspect that we would not be engaged in this debate.

If Novell/SUSE/Ximian sees this as an opportunity to take desktop share
away from RH, let them go after it. There is nothing like a little
competition to drive people. If they can help make it a viable market,
ultimately, that will help everyone. In a high tide, everybody's boat
floats higher. However, there is no guarantee of that near term.

Marc






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