On 13 Dec 2005, at 09:07, Rob Landley wrote:
On Tuesday 13 December 2005 01:56, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
t best.
And you don't have to be Linux user to refuse closed hardware.
Having
option in future is always good.x
If Linux desktop users are less than 5% of the laptop buying
population,
a more effective technique would be to focus purchases on small
companies
that _do_ provide things we can use.
however, in areas where margins are really thin, like consumer PC
hardware, 5% of revenue is the difference between a loss and a
profit.
With thin margins, 5% of volume isn't the same thing as 5%
revenue. It may be
5% of _profit_, but unless fixed costs being amortized are a
dominant factor
the whole point of thin margins is that it costs you almost as much to
produce as you sell it for.
More importantly, if they can't trace the loss back to what made the
difference, then it doesn't matter. And very few things at this
level have
only one cause. When less than 1% of the planet's population ever
bought the
product in the first place, a few more not buying it really doesn't
register
easily. Making a change may net you $5 million and cost you $10
million
elsewhere. (Hence boycotts either not being noticed or being
attributed to
tidal forces and brownian motion. And most of them simply _aren't_
big
enough to make a difference. There are groups out that regularly
claim
responsibility for the sun coming up. Decision makers learn to
filter this
stuff out.)
Now large customers that purchase lots of stuff in blocks can
easily get their
needs noticed at the negotiating table. "Not supporting X will
cost your
company this $$$ million contract". They don't have to find this
out via
data mining or surveys, there's a big check with explicit strings
attached.
And if we can have official 'works well' and 'don't buy' lists,
the PR
around that can help make that impact, especially if people who don't
run linux yet but might in the future also start to pay attention to
this list.
Bad publicity, and good publicity for competitors, is something
that can get
noticed, yes. But being able to translate it into actual dollar
values is
noticeably more effective. Showing an $x dollar market that
wouldn't exist
without Linux-motivated purchases is one way to do that.
Hence the justification for a Linux logo. As I said in another thread
"Linux Hardware Quality Labs":
"The primary motivation for this is that it leverages the individual
power of each purchaser (of a system or individual piece of hardware)
be they a consumer, SME, system builder, tier 1 or 2 PC manufacturer,
government dept., or Linux distro company, into a single point of
pressure that can be applied to OEMs to ensure that they provide open
source drivers."
regards,
Felix
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