-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Peter Flodin wrote:
On 5/16/06, Pascal Bleser
wrote: Right. I even think it's a good concept. Mostly because it is available as a free download (I guess), SUSE 10.0 has had a huge gain. At least the Packman download stats have tripled since 10.0 has been released.
The strategy is quite clear. Spread the good word with SUSE Linux, and the more successful it is, the easier for Novell to convince people that the sister product is ready for corporate desktop.
Exactly.
I haven't understood the concern some have expressed here that SUSE Linux is is not making money from selling the box.
I'm sure there are still quite a few people who buy the box. Also, the price of the retail box has dropped (by having a box of a lesser quality and also by dropping the large book from it), from 80-90 EUR to 60 EUR. What could be interesting is to know how many people who bought the box before now only download the ISOs from the internet. Personally, I don't, I bought every single retail box since 5.0 and will continue to do so.
If there is a missing admin guide of sufficient quality, now is the time to create an opensource version, don't buy the box and spend the money on getting it printed.
AFAIK it is accessible for contributors, and it's available on the internet repo anyway (it's not on the CDs for 10.1, unfortunately (?)).
SUSE Linux needs to compete with Windows which comes bundled with most people's machine (the cost is hidden). It needs to compete with other
Yeah, that's a tough one. Needs to have the big vendors involved, Dell, HP, ... Hopefully things will get moving in that area. But I think we should rather try to make the best Linux distribution and the best community around it. As far as competing with Windows, that's Novell's problem (not that it's success doesn't have influence on us, though).
distros such as Ubuntu, which will ship you printed CDs for free, and provide 3 years of support on desktop and 5 years on the server (with no registration :-).
Yes and no. Ubuntu still fails to have a viable model, it only works
because Shuttleworth is putting a few millions of $ into the community
every year, without anything in return.
I guess that one day (and probably not too far away from now), Canonical
will have to put up some business model of some kind, whatever that will be.
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
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