Stephen Smoogen wrote: > ... >>I also am not sure I understand the dumping of the RHL product line. >>Again it is a poor business choice. Spawning off Fedora makes sense. >>Dropping RHL though? > > 1) > ... > 5) > ... > So if we take the optimistic cut of $20.00 per boxed set and a > conservative costs of ~4 million/year.. you will need to sell at least > 200,000 boxed sets in a year. If you have lower price point or higher > costs.. then the numbers increase quite a bit. I do not know how those > numbers compare to Red Hat sales... Stephen, Your reply reflects a misconception that i think needs discussion. (Whether or not here is the place, i don't know - probably it would be better happening in some sales channel meeting with Red Hat - but here goes...) You have confused the operating system Red Hat Linux with the boxed set Red Hat Linux. Despite their names, they are two different things. One is an OS that people install on their computers, the other is a pretty box and a manual and 30 days of installation support that people buy off the shelf at a retailer. Most people associated the two - hence the confusion - but that only shows that RH had strong brand recognition, not that they were actually the same. Most of us who have been complaining about the product being dropped were complaining about the loss of the *operating system*, not the loss of the *boxed set*. We existed mostly on downloads and RHN subscriptions anyway. There are two issues - the /development/ of an OS and the /distribution/ of that OS. If i can claim to represent the .edu/.org/home-user folks who have been bemoaning the demise of RHL, i would say this about the recent changes: nearly all of the discussion about cost-effectivness has been about distribution, not development. If RH were losing money on the development of RHL, they will likely still be doing so with Fedora, probably even more so, given that coordination with the developer community takes more time than internal coordination, and the releases will be more frequent. (Also add to that the cost of the extra development needed to produce RHEL.) If Red Hat were losing money on the distribution, they could change that without affecting the development. The OS development has no necessary affiliation with the distribution channel; they could take away the latter and still allow us to keep the former. The argument that RH are now going to be financially viable because they are not developing RHL any more really isn't convincing. There is something else happening here to which those of us outside are not privy that is controlling this decision. (As an aside, i suggest to RH that a good way to fix the distribution problem would have been to change your trademark policy and allow resellers to reproduce a set of ISOs and call it Red Hat Linux, bundle it in whatever packaging they chose (probably with a selected set of logos that are approved for use by resellers), with or without printed manuals, and drop the centralised installation support (resellers or retailers could offer it at their discretion). That way resellers could make the boxed sets and the only thing you'd be responsible for would be giving them the ISOs - all of the other distribution costs could be left to them. Don't forget that you did win an award (last year?) for being the best product to resell - that will be all gone in the brave new world of RHEL.) -- Paul http://paulgear.webhop.net A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right. Q: Why should i start my reply below the quoted text?
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