Re: A Linux Today story has been mailed to you!

[Raju Mathur <raju@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>>>> "Biju" == Biju Chacko <biju@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Biju> [snip]
    Biju> Thats just my point. Whereas you and I can turn a profit on
    Biju> services, I seriously doubt whether the Red Hats and SuSEs
    Biju> of this world can. They're sinking large amounts of money to
    Biju> make sure that people like Alan Cox can support a fulltime
    Biju> hobby. But where are the profits? Are profits possible?
    Biju> Will commercial Linux distros survive? For all this and
    Biju> more, tune in next week for the next episode of "The Bald
    Biju> and the Not-so-Beautiful". (Sorry, couldn't resist that).

    Biju> Unfortunately, a "service" has no intrinsic value -- only
    Biju> what the customer places on it. The service of assembling a
    Biju> cohesive operating system has lost it's value -- customers
    Biju> are not willing to pay for it in the
    Biju> $free_software_philosophy world. In comparison, the _other_
    Biju> services, manuals, support, and so on, are in lesser demand
    Biju> and probably cannot sustain the distro makers.

You're falling into the same trap again: confusing product and
service.  Linux distributions are products, and will probably not
sustain any distribution maker.  What will sustain Redhat, for
example, is as you said, manuals, support, direct service,
franchisees, etc.  In fact it's not too difficult to envisage a world
where the RH distribution remains a loss for RH while their real
revenues come from licensing RHCE exams.

    Biju> Without them, it will be a lot harder for a lot of hackers
    Biju> to sustain their hobbies. Thats what I meant when I said
    Biju> that $free_software is a luxury. Unless _somebody_ can make
    Biju> large anounts of money off of it, it will always stay in a
    Biju> niche.

Not too many hackers employed by the distribution makers, actually.
And continuing with AC's example, he can probably make much more money
working out of his home than working for RH.  I doubt if kernel
development will slow down: it didn't when Linus joind Transmeta.  And
if Alan decides to spend more time making money than working on the
kernel, there'll be a 100 more people willing to take on that mantle.
Finally things will find their own level anyway.

BTW, 58% of the web server market, 70% of the mail server market, 99%
of the DNS server market and 25% of the server OS market (FWIW) can
hardly be described as ``niche''.

Regards,

-- Raju
-- 
Raju Mathur          raju@xxxxxxxxxxxxx           http://kandalaya.org/