On Wednesday 01 Oct 2003 5:51 pm, Buck wrote: > Red Hat does not have to charge their prices to stay solvent. Their > only business need is to increase productivity and profit. It is now a > publicly traded company and has a responsibility to the stock holders > (whether or not I like it). As for losing business, there are many > times in which losing customers is more profitable than keeping them. I > started my home based business servicing home computers on-site at a low > rate. After a while, I was constantly driving, working or talking on > the phone. I eventually tripled my rates, dropped most of my home > support and retained 3 commercial customers. Even though I lost my one > biggest account, I only needed to work about 1 or two days a week and my > "keep" pay was the same as when I was busting my @$$ all week long. > Likewise, Red Hat is probably catering to their "million-dollar" > accounts that require less overhead to service and dropping their > customers that might be making a profit, but costs them more to service > and support. Sure, they may lose 25% of their "business" but what > remains will be much more profitable leaving them with more time and > resources to service their contracts, improve their product and work > with Fedora. > > Well, that's my $.02 (or less) worth. > > Really, it's just business. > > Buck All of the above makes sense but leaves the question if redhat only wants the niche market of higher margin enterprise customers what fils the gap for the rest, currently its largely microsoft... Dave. -- Dr. David Holden. (Systems Developer) Crystallography Journals Online: <http://journals.iucr.org> Thanks in advance:- Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See: <http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html> UK Privacy (R.I.P) : http://www.stand.org.uk/commentary.php3 Public GPG key available on request. -------------------------------------------------------------
