There are some flaws in your reasoning. Howard Owen said: [snip] > 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. Most corporations (right or wrong) view no cost as a disadvantage. When asking companies for bids for a contract, it is common practice to throw out the highest and lowest, because the high one is trying to make to much money and the low one is either cutting corners or not understanding the job at hand. > First, it > would > accelerate adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop, a trend that is > real and > growing. Having no support at home isn't that big of a deal. Having no support in a business, with my job on the line if something goes wrong is. There is no way in Hell *I* would do a large scale roll out of an OS without support. > 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." As above, low cost doesn't mean widely adopted. You will find out in the Linux space, the distro that gets highest regards is the one the person administrating it is familiar with. This can be changed if third party requirements exist (i.e. Oracle certs for the Enterprise line). -- William Hooper
