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Red Hat To Drop Boxed Retail Distribution
An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat, the leading American distributor of Linux, is abandoning the retail channel, the company is expected to announce Monday, says this story in Linux and Main. Non-Red Hat developers will be given a greater role in deciding what's in upcoming Red Hat distributions, too."
I think Red Hat is making a mistake.
There is enormous PR value in having a retail product available, even if it is not particularily profitable.
Example: Ericsson is widely known as a "cell phone manufacturer". Actually, they make very little money off selling consumer products like cell phones. Ericsson has always made its money off the sales of system hardware. (switches and whatnot)
But it's the consumer products that have given them brand-recognition, and that is worth a lot.
I think Red Hat should take note of this.
Red Hat was probably hemorrhaging cash in the consumer retail arena... so rather than continue to fight a loosing battle, they're regrouping and doing what works for them.
It's a novel conect in the IT economy.... focus on what actually makes your company money, and dump what you loose money on. Red Hat isn't a Microsoft... they don't have the capital to piss away to maintain market share. They *need* to focus on what makes money.
a few comments.
1. anyone that doesn't have access to a distro of linux is entirely unlikely to buy one off the shelf. More likely they know an über-geek already that got them into Linux or they bought it at Barnes and Noble with a huge book with 5 different flavors, what have you.
2. This strikes me as being a genius idea. Putting those boxes on the shelves is in no way cheap. Do you ever see Red Hat flying off the shelves? Only when its time to replace the box with the next version.
3. Red Hat makes their money in providing service and support contracts to big companies. Not the little guy.
This is a money thing. removing the shelf space issue is good business sense. It might tick you off but it will make investors happy.
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Red Hat is provider for Linux OS for the Enterprises. They want to concentrate more on the RH 2.1 Advance Server, and not waste too much time on the retailing the distribution.
Moveover since the developers will be actually the one doing the packaging as well, Red Hat's job will become in including those packages in their ES/AS/WS distributions. Making the developer list open to all, will in-turn help them making their ES/AS/WS services better.
They want to be a service oriented company, rather than a product oriented. And this is the only Open Source Model that will survive.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Most people who use and enjoy Linux and want to keep it going do, in fact, "shell out money" for a box set. I put my money where my mouth is; I buy every x.1 Mandrake release and am a Mandrake club member. I also just purchased the definitive guide, even though I think it's a little overpriced, the shipping is too high, the discount for being a club member isn't very much, and the entire book is available to club members (like myself) as a .pdf.
If you particularly like a certain distro and use it for day-to-day use, I suggest you do the same if you want it to survive. Or if it's something like Gentoo, give them the amount it would cost if they had a boxset once a year or so, which would be about $60.
Chris
Of course its always rather likely it isn't right. This is slashdot after all. The real story is naturally a little different.
"Red Hat clearly aren't making money in the retail channel and it makes no sense for them to be there"
You "may" be right, perhaps instead of being stocked at CompUSA, they need to go the Suse route.
"ask any number of helpful people in any number of Linux forums"
I have never used direct support from Red Hat, but when I was new to Linux, some of my most basic question were met with impatience and arrogance, or haven't you tried "this" yet, when I had no idea how to do, "this". It was only after tinkering a bit on my own and asking an somewhat intelligent question were the board or irc channels helpful, paid tech support on the other hand, will hold your, er.. hand, for the most basic questions
Solid!
When took one of RH's training classes a few years ago the instructor was telling us that less then 10% of RH's income is from the distro and they would drop it if they could. It was only a marketing tool for them. That most of RH's income is from support, training, and custom development.
Then look at RH's support model they are like Sun they don't want to deal with the lower tier customers, they only want to deal with the large corporations. Guess you could say Red Hat is turning into a traditional Unix company.
I buy the boxed sets, at least every other release. Yes, it's kind of silly, but I like having the "real" CD. It just looks sexier that way.
:)
Vote with your wallet and all of that. Remember, the busisness world counts sales, not people.
Also, I don't program, so it's my way of giving a little back to the nice people at SuSE for sponsoring KDE developers and the like.
I may not have a stall in the Bazar, but I can bring doughnuts to share.
I think I need a new sig here.
"In my experience, anyone who is ready to try an alternative to Windows is going to be more turned off by the price of a boxed set than the amount of time it takes to download ISOs."
I didn't realize Windows XP....was only $89(Oem)...this makes it even harder for the boxed product of Red Hat to sell...Joe Consumer would probably opt for a more known name anyway and its advertised ease of use, but when he wants to write a simple document is when he pays the piper!..after reading some of the comments and checking the price of both Boxed products, perhaps it does indeed make sense for RH to leave the shelves....
Solid!
There are a collection of things happening the first of which will be officially announced monday. Suffice to say that Red Hat isn't crazy enough to leave people unable to obtain software on CD, nor is it going enterprise only..
You will however have to wait until Monday
Every time I buy a boxed set at CompUSA, I see people watching and I know they're wondering about using it. Certainly, they're seeing that people DO buy this "Linux thing" they've been hearing about. At work, people grab the box...or the manuals and comment on how neat it all looks. They claim to be surprised at how much you get in the package, thinking that only MS can do stuff like that. When vendors come in, I purposely leave the materials laying around and I always get a question or two about where our "commitment" is to Linux, usually followed by a resigned sigh as they realize that they'll have to adapt or lose. Red Hat is seriously underestimating the power of that box, and Linux will suffer because of this.
Agreed. At the officesupply "superstore" where I work, no retail boxed version of Red Hat (prior to version 9) has ever sold very well. At the most, we'd sell maybe 2-4 copies. Then they'd just sit on the shelf for months until the next version came out. Then rinse, repeat. Same with Mandrake, until we stopped carrying them.
But oddly, ever sinice version 9 came out we've sold about 10 copies, if not more. But if you compare that to the number of MS Windows we've sold, it's something like 10-1.
I happen to have the scoop now, for those who can't wait:
Red Hat has been taken over by aliens from Perseus Omicron 8. Future releases will be forcefully installed by tentacled monsters on all machines in existence to enslave the pathetic humans...
and they will drop RPM in favor of apt-get.
Remember, you heard it first on /. and that is a pretty good source.
The aliens is belivable, the tentacled monsters are believable, but apt-get.. ;)