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Why Do Commercial Offerings Use Linux, But Not Support Linux Users?
Michele Alessandrini writes "Having bought several TomTom One navigation systems at work, I was browsing their web site to find information about maps.
There are several pages of documentation about their devices.
In one of them, they proudly inform you that their devices use Linux, as a warranty of power and stability. They even prominently display their GPL compatibility. But, when you come to the software (the one used to manage updates, set locations, etc), they only support Windows and Mac OS. Not that surprising, and not a real necessity. Just the same, they probably saved millions of dollars using a free kernel and didn't think to support Linux users. As Linux gains ground in commercial applications like this, how often are we going to see actual users of the OS left out in the cold? Why don't more Linux-using shops reach out to the Linux-using community?"
But wasn't that part of the point of the summary -- they saved a ton by using a premade OS rather than building their own. What's so hard about giving back to the community a tiny little something. After all, it is that very community that made their profits possible in the first place. It's about good citizenship, not an extra two cents profit per device.
Plus, it really is true that linux users probably affect more sales than just the machines we buy for ourselves. I know I have personally influenced the buying habits 5 other users in the last 24 months (all non-linux users). Get the geeks excited about your product, you'll sell to them and everyone they know. So that two cent loss caused by giving back, might turn into an extra dime profit over all.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
But why should a company support linux just because their gadget has linux running inside it? The group that writes the software for the gadget is probably a totally different group than the one that writes the desktop interface software. And an even more different group is responsible for answering the phone and supporting users.
The software that runs in the device specifies an interface. The software that runs on the desktop makes use of the interface to interact with the device. How the device implements the interface is completely irrelevant. So the fact that the device uses linux has absolutely no bearing on whether the desktop software supports linux.
This reminds me of the joke that 2+2 is 5 for sufficiently high values of 4.
I had a hilarious conversation with another geek recently (Mac and Linux using one).
He buys wine on the Internet (can't be bothered to go to the shop). The wine shop recently "upgraded" their software and it stopped working for everything but Windows. He wrote to their tech support and asked why. He got the well known answer - that they do not have the resources to support the development and verification for 3% of the Internet user base.
3 months later they called him with a prolonged and sincere apology and asked him to come back and that they have fixed the shop.
Guess what - 97% of the population that buys wine on the Internet by the case at 20+ quid a pop does not run Windows. More likely - windows is under 40% and even that runs firefox or opera. Rest are MacOS and Linux users.
The decision to cut off all non-Windows users was taken by some moron with an MBA who read some "industry press" and did not even bother asking the operations to run browser stats on the logs. As a result their revenue nosedived by 60%+.
So when someone quotes me 97% numbers I usually ask "Which population"?
If the population under discussion is "Buying luxury goods online" - bollocks.
If the population under discussion is "Geeks buying the latest must-have gadget" - bollocks.
Or even if the population is normalised by its buying power - still bollocks.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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Wife's voice, eh?
Can you also have it second-guess the way you're driving and change its mind about which way you should turn at the last minute? Or how about having it shout "Oh my GOD!!!!" at random while you're driving in traffic, and then telling you that they're putting in a new Banana Republic at the shopping center you just passed.
Until I can buy a GPS that does that, I'll stick with the real thing.
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