On Tuesday 10 June 2003 07:46, Fred A. Miller wrote:
"At the Enterprise Linux Forum last week in Santa Clara, Calif., SuSE demonstrated its first enterprise corporate desktop designed for large IT infrastructures. SuSE Linux Desktop is priced at $598 for a five-user license and comes with a five-year maintenance contract, said Holger Dyroff, general manager of Americas at SuSE. It offers a corporate GUI and a choice of running Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 6.0 or Microsoft Office and starts shipping Monday."
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300602
-- Fred A. Miller
"Customers want to get off the dependency of Microsoft, including large corporate shops, but they want a Linux desktop with a three- to five-year life cycle, not updates every few months," the source said...." Look, lets be honest about this. M$ is not doing well. They are essentially riding on their laurels and have to be very creative insofar as doing business the old fashioned way - product based extortion and strong arming. Much as the DOJ fell far short of what it probably could have and should have done this has put a crimp in the M$ style. Those at M$ marketing are not so stupid as to ignore the writing on the wall and they know it's only a matter of time until Linux can really give them a run for the money. Like most megacorporations M$ moves slowly in many respects. Much of the Licensing 6 plan was likely part of a 5 year plan and entailed a massive infrastructural effort to make sure all on the M$ campus were on the same page and up to speed. Now, giving that many companies hated the L6 plan but were initially intimidated by M$ the option of an alternative product was just not on the radar and prevailing attitudes regarding any discention led to the beleif of punitive actions they translated in to $$$$ being extorted by M$ for stepping out of line. Now, as time has passed, companies are feeling more enboldened and paired with the bare bones fact of bare bones budgets M$ products, licenses, costs et al have pushed their client base into the proverbial corner. It's not just the cost of products and licenses but the cost in human resources to upgrade, patch, maintian, etc, etc, etc, that have ultimately led to the inevitible conclusion that there must be a better way. Now the test. Can Linux and the OSS community meet the challenge? I think so! But only if they stick with a standard of meeting the needs of the users and corporate clients. One of the failings (though vastly improved from previously) is that much of Linux development was geared toward the developers needs themselves. This often led to problems. Many sys admins are capable of writing a driver, or debugging a program. But it's more a question of "how many" drivers or tweaks need to be done in light of their other responsibilities and tasks. Much of what Linux has gained in the OS is on the side of getting things to just work. And now it's time to put all the pieces together. Getting the stuff to just work, to just install, to just upgrade, to not need Joe/Jane user to have to go CLI because it scares them to death. I believe we're see a very important time in OSS and Linux. It's a make or break time. I know that those, such as the devs at SuSE, are up to the task. It's more a matter of knowing, resources and timing. These guys are most likely busting their humps putting out new products. Considering they just slammed out 8.2 and shortly after have pumped out this next Corporate version. I just hope that they have time to catch their breath and don't get over extended. This is my fear. That Linux will strain it resources and find it difficult to maintain the push. M$ has billions and a large pool of devs to throw at something. Even with this their complacency is showing. Now is the time for Linux and OSS to really step up to the plate and take a swing. <end diatribe> Cheers, Curtis.