On Thursday 02 Oct 2003 4:05 pm, Bryan J. Smith wrote: > 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. I agree about letting the "shrink wrapped" product be defined by the enterprise customer, but it seems to me that Redhat will not have a "skrink wrapped product" for the small business because they are not going to provide a "stable" low priced product with security updates for the small business. When fedora is release will I beable to say to my boss, yes we can install fedora version "x" and be able to rely on redhat providing security updates for the next 2-3 years for that version, or will have have to say to my boss if you want a stable OS for 2-3year you will have to cough up $345 for system/per year. As far as I know for version of Microsoft OS's your guaranteed >3 years use of that OS and security updates are *free*. (Yes I know microsoft and security are words that really don't mix :)) 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. -------------------------------------------------------------
