Actually, I DID mean drop the license to zero dollars.
I think the up front cost of the desktop version means it will not be
deployed in volume. Large enterprises will deploy free alternatives
instead, because that will help make ROI on the whole project
reasonable.If this is a correct assumption, then Red Hat will not make
much money from licensing WS. If they make it free. then they can
compete for support dollars with everyone else, and win some. Their
value proposition on servers is more compelling, so the AS offering can
help drive WS adoption, which in turn can help drive support sales.
No one will be able to garner the sort of revenue stream Microsoft gets
from its desktop monopoly. The only way to break their grip, even just
a little, is to offer a much lower cost alternative that does the
important things businesses look for in a desktop solution just as
well. Linux is *this* close to being able to achieve that. If the
leading Linux vendor adds license fees up front, it will slow
adoption, perhaps long enough to allow Microsoft to leverage its current
monopoly into dominating the next wave of client technology, whatever
that turns out to be.
On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 10:20, Magnus wrote:
On Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 12:13 PM, Stephen Smoogen wrote:
> Sure and Red Hat can go belly up in 2 years because no-one is paying
> them for all the work they do.
I didn't read that to imply that the WS product should be free, but
that the license fee should be reduced to something more reasonable.
In effect, this suggests that RHAT should profit from volume sales
rather than margin (since they can't do both simultaneously like MS).
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