I congratulate you. I have brought SuSE into 3 or 4 people's lives. I think every additional Linux user is an accomplishment. Regarding the "future" there is different ways to get to the same point as always. I am not saying every Linux user should go out and buy Linux stocks. Every sane investment advisor only suggest to buy what you are convinced off. To you it makes sense to get a mortgage and buy a house and then pay off that mortgage over 30 years. That is one way to approach it. I was born in Germany and grew up under communism. I guess it is my traits that always tell me to never get into debt. Therefore something like an American mortgage is out of my league. I could never find sleep if I had myself bound into a debt contract for 30 years. Therefore I go the other route and build a solid diversified investment portfolio so that over the next ten years I accumulate wealth with which I can buy a house in cash. Two approaches to the same solution. BTW, I am 23 years old and still in college so just because you are young doesn't mean you can't invest. I am single too so I don't need a house actually. I just don't want to be the person who starts worrying about their retirement when I am hitting 50 and my mortgage is not even paid off yet. Most likely we are two very different types of people. Fact is though and any advisor will tell you the same if you say you can't invest because you are in this certain stage of life then you are not being honest to yourself. Open free software spreadsheet creator and accumulate 25 dollar a week in investments over a time period of 20 years with a possible interest of 15%/yr. It's a hell lot of money in 20 years. The question is: If not even the Linux users are buying Linux stocks, who will??? I bet there are more Linux users with MSFT stock than there are Linux users with Linux stocks. I hope this gives people something to think about and reevaluate where Linux may need some support. Why did the Borland Corel deal break???? Because Corel stock dropped so much. If people had jumped in and sustained the price of the stock the Borland deal would have went through. Then the market would have had something to pick up on and I don't think Corel would be in money trouble as they are today. I mean writing an open source program is great but it will not definitely save a company from doom. Money will, as sad as that may be. It seems the distros will all improve over the next 2 years and that is great. But if the stock prices of the companies go to 0 they might never be able to ship their products. I am all for free software but don't ignore the financials. mk
From: "Guy Van Sanden"
Reply-To: sienix@flashmail.com To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE 7 Deluxe now vmware talk Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 07:17:03 -0700 I'm commited to linux and freebsd in many ways. I got Linux in with some of my friends (IT professionals).
I got it into my company (which is a big customer) AND I'm now in a position to give support for it. That Linux is always SuSE.
What I can't and won't do is put money in stock. If your young, and just got married, you try to build a future (a home). Buying and certainly loosing 4000$ in stock is not an option.
And, with al due respect, for some people 20$ on a regular bases is a big deal.
I can understand a that SuSE or any other distro needs to earn money. I would understand that my company had to pay a lot more for a Linux license, but if SuSE had cost this much a couple of years ago, when I was still a student, I might not have bought it. And my company would still use NT for tasks, now performed by Linux.
-------------------------------------------------------------- I take your point and all the others. Yes, everybody tries to cut cost as we are all not rich but you have to give SuSE some credit.
It's a tough business to beat Microsoft and get a Linux version on a PC. And now where we(all Linux distros) are in the open market we are free bait. I must say if Linux doesn't make positive earnings within 2 years something terrible could happen. The whole model of free software could get flushed down the drain.
You must understand that a company like RedHat can only stay on the stock market for a certain amount of time and make a loss. SuSE announced they will go IPO soon and this means if they don't make money eventually the company goes out of business.
Why is that a threat? Because nobody would buy SuSE. Why would you buy SuSE if you could buy Corel??? Corel at least got WordPerfect. Why buy SuSE if you could buy Caldera? Caldera at least now seems to get Unix trademark from SCO.
Hence if Linux companies keep crawling on the floor IBM, Gateway, AOL will sooner or later lose interest and we might all go back to Windows because free software model has failed.
What is the solution? Gain as many users as possible and that quickly. Now SuSE can handle a short term loss of revenue if you don't buy the next version but they must gain an additional user instead to make up the loss. They are trying to do this now. I hope they succeed. How can you help free software win? Bring Linux close to all your friends. The more people use it the lower the cost will be soon.
Honestly I believe there is too few business people among the techie crowd. Everybody here bitches about 20 bucks. I lost 4,000 dollars on RedHat stock over the last 6 months. I still haven't sold the stock. I don't even use RedHat and never seen their products. I am though commited to Linux and I can take this short term loss if over long term I make a bit off money and I can handle taking this hit now if it helps sustain price stability among the stock.
I am real curious about how many Linux users own Linux stock. I bet it doesn't approach 20%. I hope you don't take this to the heart but I think every Linux user who doesn't have an interest in a rising stock price of Linux companies is killing Linux. The market is evil and so far Linux stocks have been raised and lowered by daytraders. I read the business news and no analyst likes to touch Linux stocks. They are scared shitless to buy a single share because they fear it will drop to 0 any minute. The only way these stocks gain respect from the analysts again is if Linux users sequentially buy more and more shares of the Linux stocks to give it a long term slow-rising upwards trend. Once this trend shows analysts gain respect in a stock and will put their clients money into it. The effect will be slow growth in stock price, respect for a Linux company and healthy look on the charts =) and a better outlook for the future.
So please don't tell me 25 bucks more for SuSE is a big loss for you when there is Linux users out there who lost thousands of dollars on Linux stock and still hold onto their shares because they feel they have a commitment with Linux and free software.
Maybe it is time to ask the real question. How much Linux is enough for you? On your desktop only or also in your portfolio?
Disclaimer: I own RedHat and Corel but don't use or never used their products. I simply own them because I believe in the long term strength of free software and Linux and I rather lose a few hundred on Linux than gain a dime on MSFT.
mk
From: "Guy Van Sanden"
Reply-To: sienix@flashmail.com To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE 7 Deluxe now vmware talk Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 06:10:36 -0700 I don't think anyone wants SuSE to stand still. But many home-users are what made SuSE great. (I introduced SuSE in my company because it's the distro of my choice).
Including reiserfs and other stuff is great. Offering a seperate version of SuSE with vmware license is also great, provided offcourse that we can still choose the vmware-less version.
But splitting the distro up into two parts and almost dubbling the price, also for home-power-users is , I think a very bad move for an Open Source company, selling an GPL based OS.
The last thing I would want is for any Linux company to begin acting like M$...
----------------------------------------------------------- Once again you seem not to understand what the goal was. People on the list suddenly had this HUGE interest in VMware as soon as Michael said, "Professional comes with VMware license". There is also many users on here who buy every single release of SuSE. Add 1 and 1 together and get 2.
SuSE users may want a bundled deal. SuSE users still want every SuSE release and stay up to date. They also want VMware. Combine the two and you have what I described as SuSE Expert. Hence, this is why SuSE may want to look into this. Maybe this is a potential product scheme.
Is it complicating things? Yes, but I am sure IBM has way more complicated contracts =) And yes you have to keep track but maybe it is worth it. You certainely will raise a lot of eye brows and gain users. I said twice that details have to be worked out to make this financially probable. Maybe the 100 dollar target is way off.
Then you made a comment that VMware can just easily sell their licenses themselves. Oh if business was so easy. If that were true we wouldn't have a thread of 200 emails about how SuSE creates now two versions. Apparently software doesn't sell itself so easy. Also I may like to point out that Microsoft didn't get to where they are by selling Windows on the shelves all by itself. They bundled it with everything they could possibly bundle it with. When I explained the SuSE Expert version and put the price target to 100 dollars and said there was a SuSE+VMware deal I meant that SuSE bundles their product and then channels some of the profits back to VMware. Of course they can't sell a VMware license and not pay VMware. I am pretty certain this will sell more licenses of VMware than VMware could possibly ever sell by themselves for the price of 299. America is the land of bundles it seems. You can't walk a block without seeing some bundled deal. McDonalds and Britney Spears, George Foreman and grills, get a hub and two nics, SuSE and VMware, Linux und Musik (remember that one? =), ....
And people buy this bundled stuff. Time seems to have proven that.
I think the essential question is: Do you want SuSE to remain forever where they are, selling a single Linux product, or go out there enthusiastically and make some serious business with people offering all kinds of product ranges? If it was me I would want to evolve into some strong business machine.
I guess I have another fact to prove my theory. SuSE now comes with Reiserfs. There seems to be no money involved?! But people seem to love the opportunity to use this file system and I bet simply by including it it is an advantage point to keep a SuSE user a SuSE user and not have him go to some other distro. hence there is money involved. Every single reason which keep a user a SuSe user means money for SuSE. VMware may be such a reason.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with VMware in any way and have never used VMware.
mk
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