Quoting David Holden <dh@xxxxxxxx>: > 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... Er, I have to disagree because I think you're making some assumptions that are incorrect. You see, Microsoft's "shrink wrapped" products _are_ (and _always_ have been) currently defnined by its enterprise customers, and large volume sales. The fact that they also sell on the retail shelves is just to further that volume even more. But the small volume consumers have _no_say_ in the product's design, simply because they are not worth Microsoft's bother from a financial perspective. Red Hat is basically moving to this same model with a twist. Like Microsoft, it let's its "shrink wrapped" products be defined by its enterprise customers, because it's not worth it to spend money to accomodate the small guy. But unlike Microsoft, they give the community basically everything in their "shrink wrapped" products. That way the smaller volume community has a way to define its products into what _they_ want as well. I think Red Hat has got the "best of both worlds" down from a business and consumer standpoint. The only fear I have is this. I just hope the "QA/integration testing" that I am used to in Red Hat Linux is still available in Fedora Linux, without suffering the "tag lag" like we see with Debian Stable. I.e., I used to find Red Hat Linux the best of both QA/integration testing and half-way recent/current packages. In the Debian world, the two see to be mutually exclusive -- Stable = former, Testing = latter. And, of course, Mandrake is totally the latter, nothing of the former. ;-ppp -- Bryan J. Smith, E.I. mailto:b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx http://thebs.org ------------------------------------------------------------------ There is no greater ignorance than the popular American environ- mental movement, which focuses on the most useless details. Be it recycling the world's most renewable resource or refusal to use proven CFC insulation on launch vehicles, no lives will be spared in the further pursuit of, ironically, harming the environment.
