CS Lewis was a great writer indeed and the Narnia books were a lot of fun. They seemed to lack the sheer scale and epic feel that LotR did.
I also think his use of (then) modern day children undermined people's impression of his tales as serious literature. A progenitor to the Harry Potter effect.
When you just say, "The problem is the source material isn't as strong. The Hobbit isn't nearly as good as LotR." and cite no reasons... I say "Opinion. Plain and simple opinion with no critical thought."
Your follow up better illustrated your opinion. I actually prefer LotR as well and think it is a much better crafted piece of literature, but I love the Hobbit. It was a fun read and a great introduction to the series for me at age 7. I reread it every so often and I give that book to all of my friends when they have their first child. I still love the book.
It's a children's book essentially, but a story that even an adult can enjoy.
Is it comparable to Joyce or Pynchon in terms of sophistication? Of course not. It was written for an entirely different purpose and audience. It's not hardcore literature, but a very fun read, especially aloud to another person.
I got to read some to my two year old nephew recently and you should have seen his eyes light up while I did it.
THAT was magic.
If I read one page of LotR to him, he'd be asleep in no time. Maybe I should suggest that to my sister in-law.
Most popular film, music and literature is entertaining filler.
I love sci-fi, action, horror and fantasy films. It's great escapism, but not nearly as satisfying as say Dr. Strangelove or Manhattan or 8 1/2. Comedies? Dramas? Surrealist weirdness?
Some things are very easily defined by their genre. Conan the Barbarian... fantasy movie. Not much else. 100% genre film.
Annie Hall. Comedy? Drama? Fits into a much larger, less niche category.
The Shining. Horror movie? Thriller? Drama? Given it's origin, it's very easy to call it horror, but it's a lot deeper than most horror movies. Much less a genre flick. I definitely would not put it in the same category as Halloween or Friday the 13th.
Most people feel a need to categorize everything into nice little boxes they can easily understand. Hence, "everything has a genre". Yeah, it kinda does, but there are degrees.
Drama covers a much broader category than say "slasher film".
Blazing Saddles is much more comedy than a western.
Genre is really more a function of marketing movies than it is a useful categorization of movies.
He probably actually believes he is writing religious texts and not works of fiction. was meant to be funny.
Once I found out he was a Scientologist, I promptly decided against ever reading anything of his as I choose to boycott Scientologist endeavors as best I can... it's damn hard to do by the way. They have their hands in just about everything.
This isn't Star Wars or The Matrix. This isn't George Lucas.
Peter Jackson as a steward of the Tolkien lineage is in good hands. Jackson is first and foremost a filmmaker, not a greedy profiteer like Lucas or the Wachowski brothers.
Look where Peter Jackson came from. Bad Taste, Dead Alive, Meet the Feebles, Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners, Lost Silver. That's an impressive list of films to create before doing something that actually had a budget!
He's a fan of the books first and won't do anything, consciously anyway, to tarnish their reuptation.
Um... Frodo was not supposed to be middle aged. He was a young adult who was "Still in love with the Shire".
Seeing a middle aged person become ravaged by the ring would be truly less horrendous than seeing someone just attaining adulthood and having their entire life spread out before them only to be roped into "saving the world from evil at high personal cost".
Even though Frodo lived through the event, he was forever changed and could not go back to enjoying the simple, pleasant life that Sam, Merry and Pippin did. Even they could not experience hobbit life the way their contemporaries did because they each had a great adventure which changed them and expanded their view and understanding of their world. The remainder of the hobbits suffered a bit of discomfort at the hands of Saruman, but their world was essentially still the Shire and not much more than that.
None of the other Shire residents could ever possibly understand what Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam experienced. They were veterans of a world war which, for all intents and purposes, had very little impact on the Shire and people couldn't understand why they were changed by their experiences.
Very prophetic of what Vietnam vets would experience twenty-some years later.
Try being American and break into the Canadian film industry. It's damn near impossible. I'm a filmmaker in Seattle, have the skills to work in Vancouver, but can't.
Well, The Hobbit was a much more intimate story. Much smaller in scale. It will be easier to direct in that fashion.
This is all relative of course. There are still a ton of characters and a lot of action... BIG action in it, but getting inside the characters will be less of a herculean task.
That said, I can't wait to see Beorn! He was always one of my favorite characters in that story.
A definite inspiration for the druids in World of Warcraft.
I remember that I read Pratt and de Camp at some point... couldn't name a book or a single character now... I can still name every single member of the Fellowship... almost 30 years after I read it the first time.
Tolkien was genre and not genre at the same time. Most genre literature, film, music is entertaining filler. It serves it's purpose at the time, but fades from memory. Genre art rarely becomes "timeless".
I'm a huge metal fan. In the 80's... that was it for me. I've since vastly broadened my musical tastes, but I still remember everything from Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Exodus. Vio-Lence, Testament, Blind Illusion, Death, Death Angel, Forbidden, Flotsam and Jetsam... you name. I listened to 'em all, saw them a ton of times and if you played me some of their stuff right now, I just might not recognize it, but if you play me something off of "Spreading the Disease", an album I haven't owned in well over 15 years, I could probably sing along to every track.
Some works of art transcend their genre and become timeless. Some works succumb to their genre and are only remembered as vague sounds or words... and ardently defended as superior to their popular counterparts by a zealous few.
I think all this talk of "who is the better fantasy writer" is actually kind of hilarious. I gobbled up sci-fi and fantasy as a teenager. I couldn't get enough. But in my mid-30's now, the only names that still stick with me are Tolkien, Herbert, LeGuin and Azimov.
They seemed to write beyond the genre. Philip K. Dick? I started reading him later, early 20's and I simply couldn't do it. Interesting ideas, but everything was so science-fictiony.... gimmicky. It called attention to itself and revealed itself as genre.
Now, PKD books are a great source of material for sci-fi movies though because you don't have to see him use his overly "genrefied" language and you can dig into the world and characters with pictures rather than silly words like "zap gun". In a movie, the thing is just a gun. You see it rather than read it's name.
Back to Dune... that whole series was amazing. So massive in scope and prophetic of world events to come. It was like a spy novel, economics and ecology textbook, and sci-fi novel all rolled into one. Again, epic! Lots of detail to get lost in. Lots of history, sociology and politics to track.
Herbert's universe was as vast and intriguing as the history of Middle Earth to me. Again, the place was as much a character as the people.
Go read The Power of Myth and The Hero with 1000 Faces.
Tolkien wasn't going for in depth character analysis. His characters were all Jungian archetypes. We relate to them because we already know them.
If he did in depth character studies for all of the characters in LotR, that series would have been ten times longer than it is and far less interesting.
Tolkien was trying to do more than just "write a story" with LotR. He was literally trying to create a "Modern European Mythology". He was trying to write an epic tale that was alive beyond just story and plot.
He was trying to create an entire world, where the world was one of the characters and all the flowery stuff most people skip over was part of that character development.
Ugh. I understand people have preferences when it comes to fantasy.
What everyone needs to realize though is that without Tolkien, most of the pulp fiction fantasy writers that so many people love now would not be writing were it not for Tolkien.
Just like most guitarists today would not be playing were it not for Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen.
Most serious filmmakers are going to put Psycho and The Shining down as some of their top horror picks.
Artistic history is very important for the development of an art form. Sure, you may like Johnny Come Lately writer/filmmaker/musician more than the old masters and that's fine, but unless you dig into the historical works, you can't fully appreciate what you have in the modern arts.
I'm a huge Wes Anderson fan, but his style comes from obviously watching tons of Robert Altman and Woody Allen films... and 70's television. He combines these influences to great effect while adding his own unique style.
If I hadn't spent the time watching Allen and Altman movies, I probably wouldn't appreciate Wes Anderson as much as I do.
A good director can save a bad script from becoming a total trash movie... but if the script just isn't up to snuff, no director can make a great movie out of it. The story just isn't there.
With a bad script, all a director can do is turd polish.
None of the Blade movies were actually bad. Sure, Blade was probably the best of them... but come on... these are Blade movies! They are filler. Their only purpose is to make you go "Ooooh! Cool!"
The characters are all one dimensional. That franchise is about entertainment and entertainment only. Blockbuster filler.
Fun to watch, but if you get bent out of shape over the quality of Blade movies, you need to step back, rent some Kubrick, Felini and Woody Allen movies and get some perspective. Or watch Raiders of the Lost Arc or Die Hard again at least.
Well, the big difference with the prequels was the fact that George Lucas wrote and directed all of them himself... and he's a crap director.
Very few people will argue that Empire is the best of the 6 movies. Irvin Kirshner directed that. NOT George Lucas and Lucas had help writing from Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett.
Add to that the fact that he was mentored by Joseph Campbell and you're working on a whole different level than Lucas on his own.
When Lucas works on his own, he gets trite. The only good filmmaking he has ever really done was when he collaborated with others.... and American Grafitti.
And THX was a Kubrik knock off piece of garbage. Simple concept, overly stylized... Kubrik wannabe.
If Lucas wanted the prequel trilogy to be good, he'd have gotten someone like Ridley Scott to direct them and should have utilized some writing partners.
Opinion. Plain and simple opinion with no critical thought.
The Hobbit isn't nearly as epic in scale as LotR, but it's a solid story with good character development.
It's much more suited to film adaptation than LotR was mainly because it isn't so grandiose in scale. Fewer characters to follow and a much simpler plotline.
That LotR was as good as it was is nothing short of amazing. The Hobbit, with Del Toro at the helm and Jackson, Walsh, Boyen writing the script and producing, the film should be in good hands.
For all the liberties Jackson took with LotR, he approached the material with respect to it's source and to it's fans which is a major reason for it's success. I have no doubt they will do the same with The Hobbit.
Remember, we're dealing with Peter Jackson who is a lifelong film geek and not George Lucas who is really only out to make a buck... not good movies.
Again... not saying innovation doesn't occur in the OSS world. I'm just saying that the use of the word innovation has been diluted to such a point that it really has no value anymore.
The example you outline seems to be more a combination of existing technologies to find a solution to a problem. It may be innovative in the Linux world, but in the Win/OS X world, we've been able to do things like this for a very long time, so to people who have used Illustrator for more than 10 years and remember the days before PostScript Level 3, this seems like old hat and not innovative. The method of achieving it may be the result of innovative thought, but the end product is not that innovative as it already exists elsewhere.
Again, I'm not saying that there isn't innovation in OSS land. I'm just saying that what a lot of people call innovation is actually just improvements to existing standards and/or applications.
I really mean to speak in a broader sense of this as a business model. It seems you've found a niche need and can fill that need and that's awesome!
But as a broader business practice, especially with larger companies who can probably fulfill their own support needs, a business model such as yours might not work.
If you have the client base with the need for your product and support of it... more power to ya! Good on you for spotting the need and having the knowhow to meet and support it.
I agree with you completely. Innovation changes the landscape, and improvements, well, they refine and enhance the innovation, making it better, more usable and hopefully less expensive.
I'm a total Mac/Apple fan, but most of what they do I would hardly call innovative, but rather drastic improvements on existing ideas and products.
The iPod, iPhone, MacOS, iMac, MacBook, Final Cut Pro, Logic etc..... nothing new here, but definite, massive improvements over their progenitors.
I don't mean to imply that there is no innovation going on, but innovation isn't a "business practice" as it is now perceived to be.
Innovative software can be created on ANY platform if the idea is a radical shift from what is currently being developed.
PageMaker was innovative software at the time. Photoshop was innovative at it's inception and innovative when it incorporated layers into the application.
PostScript was innovative.
Mosaic was innovative.
FutureSplash was innovative before it got turned into Flash and horribly abused all over the internet.
The Walkman was innovative.
I'm sure there is innovative stuff brewing in the Linux/OSS camp. It happens everywhere, but not with the frequency that people claim it does.
Most "innovations" are really just evolutionary steps in the development of product.
The only problem with a "support services model" is this.
What is your client buys your system and already has someone in the organization who is versed enough in the operations of your system that your service contract is not needed?
You have just wasted a lot of your time and effort for little to no monetary reward.
If you tie your service contract to the cost of the system, meaning your service contract is necessary for the purchase of the system, you might as well, just mark up the system and offer the services as an additional product offering.
That way, you make money on the system even if your support services are not needed and you give the customer the option of getting the support if they choose it.
With so many educated IT people out there, selling the system itself at low to no margins is business suicide. If people don't need your support, but need to take the support contract to get the system... you just lost a sale.
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CS Lewis was a great writer indeed and the Narnia books were a lot of fun. They seemed to lack the sheer scale and epic feel that LotR did.
I also think his use of (then) modern day children undermined people's impression of his tales as serious literature. A progenitor to the Harry Potter effect.
When you just say, "The problem is the source material isn't as strong. The Hobbit isn't nearly as good as LotR." and cite no reasons... I say "Opinion. Plain and simple opinion with no critical thought."
Your follow up better illustrated your opinion. I actually prefer LotR as well and think it is a much better crafted piece of literature, but I love the Hobbit. It was a fun read and a great introduction to the series for me at age 7. I reread it every so often and I give that book to all of my friends when they have their first child. I still love the book.
It's a children's book essentially, but a story that even an adult can enjoy.
Is it comparable to Joyce or Pynchon in terms of sophistication? Of course not. It was written for an entirely different purpose and audience. It's not hardcore literature, but a very fun read, especially aloud to another person.
I got to read some to my two year old nephew recently and you should have seen his eyes light up while I did it.
THAT was magic.
If I read one page of LotR to him, he'd be asleep in no time. Maybe I should suggest that to my sister in-law.
Most popular film, music and literature is entertaining filler.
I love sci-fi, action, horror and fantasy films. It's great escapism, but not nearly as satisfying as say Dr. Strangelove or Manhattan or 8 1/2. Comedies? Dramas? Surrealist weirdness?
Some things are very easily defined by their genre. Conan the Barbarian... fantasy movie. Not much else. 100% genre film.
Annie Hall. Comedy? Drama? Fits into a much larger, less niche category.
The Shining. Horror movie? Thriller? Drama? Given it's origin, it's very easy to call it horror, but it's a lot deeper than most horror movies. Much less a genre flick. I definitely would not put it in the same category as Halloween or Friday the 13th.
Most people feel a need to categorize everything into nice little boxes they can easily understand. Hence, "everything has a genre". Yeah, it kinda does, but there are degrees.
Drama covers a much broader category than say "slasher film".
Blazing Saddles is much more comedy than a western.
Genre is really more a function of marketing movies than it is a useful categorization of movies.
I'll look into it more, but 5 or 6 years ago he was listed on their roll of members.
He probably actually believes he is writing religious texts and not works of fiction. was meant to be funny.
Once I found out he was a Scientologist, I promptly decided against ever reading anything of his as I choose to boycott Scientologist endeavors as best I can... it's damn hard to do by the way. They have their hands in just about everything.
Scientology is a business and not a religion.
This isn't Star Wars or The Matrix. This isn't George Lucas.
Peter Jackson as a steward of the Tolkien lineage is in good hands. Jackson is first and foremost a filmmaker, not a greedy profiteer like Lucas or the Wachowski brothers.
Look where Peter Jackson came from. Bad Taste, Dead Alive, Meet the Feebles, Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners, Lost Silver. That's an impressive list of films to create before doing something that actually had a budget!
He's a fan of the books first and won't do anything, consciously anyway, to tarnish their reuptation.
Um... Frodo was not supposed to be middle aged. He was a young adult who was "Still in love with the Shire".
Seeing a middle aged person become ravaged by the ring would be truly less horrendous than seeing someone just attaining adulthood and having their entire life spread out before them only to be roped into "saving the world from evil at high personal cost".
Even though Frodo lived through the event, he was forever changed and could not go back to enjoying the simple, pleasant life that Sam, Merry and Pippin did. Even they could not experience hobbit life the way their contemporaries did because they each had a great adventure which changed them and expanded their view and understanding of their world. The remainder of the hobbits suffered a bit of discomfort at the hands of Saruman, but their world was essentially still the Shire and not much more than that.
None of the other Shire residents could ever possibly understand what Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam experienced. They were veterans of a world war which, for all intents and purposes, had very little impact on the Shire and people couldn't understand why they were changed by their experiences.
Very prophetic of what Vietnam vets would experience twenty-some years later.
Try being American and break into the Canadian film industry. It's damn near impossible. I'm a filmmaker in Seattle, have the skills to work in Vancouver, but can't.
Well, The Hobbit was a much more intimate story. Much smaller in scale. It will be easier to direct in that fashion.
This is all relative of course. There are still a ton of characters and a lot of action... BIG action in it, but getting inside the characters will be less of a herculean task.
That said, I can't wait to see Beorn! He was always one of my favorite characters in that story.
A definite inspiration for the druids in World of Warcraft.
Ugh. Gaiman.
Scientologist... 'nuff said. He probably actually believes he is writing religious texts and not works of fiction.
I remember that I read Pratt and de Camp at some point... couldn't name a book or a single character now... I can still name every single member of the Fellowship... almost 30 years after I read it the first time.
Tolkien was genre and not genre at the same time. Most genre literature, film, music is entertaining filler. It serves it's purpose at the time, but fades from memory. Genre art rarely becomes "timeless".
I'm a huge metal fan. In the 80's... that was it for me. I've since vastly broadened my musical tastes, but I still remember everything from Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Exodus. Vio-Lence, Testament, Blind Illusion, Death, Death Angel, Forbidden, Flotsam and Jetsam... you name. I listened to 'em all, saw them a ton of times and if you played me some of their stuff right now, I just might not recognize it, but if you play me something off of "Spreading the Disease", an album I haven't owned in well over 15 years, I could probably sing along to every track.
Some works of art transcend their genre and become timeless. Some works succumb to their genre and are only remembered as vague sounds or words... and ardently defended as superior to their popular counterparts by a zealous few.
Yeah, the guy is kind of ancient unfortunately. Still, wouldn't have been able to overcome the fact that Lucas destroyed his own universe.
Come on! Mitichlorians? The Force? Bacteria? It was supposed to be some wild Zen mystical power... not an infection!
Finally! Someone comparing Tolkien and Herbert!
I think all this talk of "who is the better fantasy writer" is actually kind of hilarious. I gobbled up sci-fi and fantasy as a teenager. I couldn't get enough. But in my mid-30's now, the only names that still stick with me are Tolkien, Herbert, LeGuin and Azimov.
They seemed to write beyond the genre. Philip K. Dick? I started reading him later, early 20's and I simply couldn't do it. Interesting ideas, but everything was so science-fictiony.... gimmicky. It called attention to itself and revealed itself as genre.
Now, PKD books are a great source of material for sci-fi movies though because you don't have to see him use his overly "genrefied" language and you can dig into the world and characters with pictures rather than silly words like "zap gun". In a movie, the thing is just a gun. You see it rather than read it's name.
Back to Dune... that whole series was amazing. So massive in scope and prophetic of world events to come. It was like a spy novel, economics and ecology textbook, and sci-fi novel all rolled into one. Again, epic! Lots of detail to get lost in. Lots of history, sociology and politics to track.
Herbert's universe was as vast and intriguing as the history of Middle Earth to me. Again, the place was as much a character as the people.
Go read The Power of Myth and The Hero with 1000 Faces.
Tolkien wasn't going for in depth character analysis. His characters were all Jungian archetypes. We relate to them because we already know them.
If he did in depth character studies for all of the characters in LotR, that series would have been ten times longer than it is and far less interesting.
Tolkien was trying to do more than just "write a story" with LotR. He was literally trying to create a "Modern European Mythology". He was trying to write an epic tale that was alive beyond just story and plot.
He was trying to create an entire world, where the world was one of the characters and all the flowery stuff most people skip over was part of that character development.
Like it or not, you have to respect it.
Ugh. I understand people have preferences when it comes to fantasy.
What everyone needs to realize though is that without Tolkien, most of the pulp fiction fantasy writers that so many people love now would not be writing were it not for Tolkien.
Just like most guitarists today would not be playing were it not for Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen.
Most serious filmmakers are going to put Psycho and The Shining down as some of their top horror picks.
Artistic history is very important for the development of an art form. Sure, you may like Johnny Come Lately writer/filmmaker/musician more than the old masters and that's fine, but unless you dig into the historical works, you can't fully appreciate what you have in the modern arts.
I'm a huge Wes Anderson fan, but his style comes from obviously watching tons of Robert Altman and Woody Allen films... and 70's television. He combines these influences to great effect while adding his own unique style.
If I hadn't spent the time watching Allen and Altman movies, I probably wouldn't appreciate Wes Anderson as much as I do.
A good director can save a bad script from becoming a total trash movie... but if the script just isn't up to snuff, no director can make a great movie out of it. The story just isn't there.
With a bad script, all a director can do is turd polish.
None of the Blade movies were actually bad. Sure, Blade was probably the best of them... but come on... these are Blade movies! They are filler. Their only purpose is to make you go "Ooooh! Cool!"
The characters are all one dimensional. That franchise is about entertainment and entertainment only. Blockbuster filler.
Fun to watch, but if you get bent out of shape over the quality of Blade movies, you need to step back, rent some Kubrick, Felini and Woody Allen movies and get some perspective. Or watch Raiders of the Lost Arc or Die Hard again at least.
Well, the big difference with the prequels was the fact that George Lucas wrote and directed all of them himself... and he's a crap director.
Very few people will argue that Empire is the best of the 6 movies. Irvin Kirshner directed that. NOT George Lucas and Lucas had help writing from Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett.
Add to that the fact that he was mentored by Joseph Campbell and you're working on a whole different level than Lucas on his own.
When Lucas works on his own, he gets trite. The only good filmmaking he has ever really done was when he collaborated with others.... and American Grafitti.
And THX was a Kubrik knock off piece of garbage. Simple concept, overly stylized... Kubrik wannabe.
If Lucas wanted the prequel trilogy to be good, he'd have gotten someone like Ridley Scott to direct them and should have utilized some writing partners.
Well, remember that LotR was originally one book comprised of 6 parts and the decision to be split into 3 books was made by the publishers.
LotR was always meant to be epic in every sense of the word.
The Hobbit was, for all intents and purposes, a bed time story for Christopher Tolkien that JRR eventually published.
Opinion. Plain and simple opinion with no critical thought.
The Hobbit isn't nearly as epic in scale as LotR, but it's a solid story with good character development.
It's much more suited to film adaptation than LotR was mainly because it isn't so grandiose in scale. Fewer characters to follow and a much simpler plotline.
That LotR was as good as it was is nothing short of amazing. The Hobbit, with Del Toro at the helm and Jackson, Walsh, Boyen writing the script and producing, the film should be in good hands.
For all the liberties Jackson took with LotR, he approached the material with respect to it's source and to it's fans which is a major reason for it's success. I have no doubt they will do the same with The Hobbit.
Remember, we're dealing with Peter Jackson who is a lifelong film geek and not George Lucas who is really only out to make a buck... not good movies.
Again... not saying innovation doesn't occur in the OSS world. I'm just saying that the use of the word innovation has been diluted to such a point that it really has no value anymore.
The example you outline seems to be more a combination of existing technologies to find a solution to a problem. It may be innovative in the Linux world, but in the Win/OS X world, we've been able to do things like this for a very long time, so to people who have used Illustrator for more than 10 years and remember the days before PostScript Level 3, this seems like old hat and not innovative. The method of achieving it may be the result of innovative thought, but the end product is not that innovative as it already exists elsewhere.
Again, I'm not saying that there isn't innovation in OSS land. I'm just saying that what a lot of people call innovation is actually just improvements to existing standards and/or applications.
I really mean to speak in a broader sense of this as a business model. It seems you've found a niche need and can fill that need and that's awesome!
But as a broader business practice, especially with larger companies who can probably fulfill their own support needs, a business model such as yours might not work.
If you have the client base with the need for your product and support of it... more power to ya! Good on you for spotting the need and having the knowhow to meet and support it.
I agree with you completely. Innovation changes the landscape, and improvements, well, they refine and enhance the innovation, making it better, more usable and hopefully less expensive.
I'm a total Mac/Apple fan, but most of what they do I would hardly call innovative, but rather drastic improvements on existing ideas and products.
The iPod, iPhone, MacOS, iMac, MacBook, Final Cut Pro, Logic etc..... nothing new here, but definite, massive improvements over their progenitors.
I don't mean to imply that there is no innovation going on, but innovation isn't a "business practice" as it is now perceived to be.
Innovative software can be created on ANY platform if the idea is a radical shift from what is currently being developed.
PageMaker was innovative software at the time. Photoshop was innovative at it's inception and innovative when it incorporated layers into the application.
PostScript was innovative.
Mosaic was innovative.
FutureSplash was innovative before it got turned into Flash and horribly abused all over the internet.
The Walkman was innovative.
I'm sure there is innovative stuff brewing in the Linux/OSS camp. It happens everywhere, but not with the frequency that people claim it does.
Most "innovations" are really just evolutionary steps in the development of product.
The only problem with a "support services model" is this.
What is your client buys your system and already has someone in the organization who is versed enough in the operations of your system that your service contract is not needed?
You have just wasted a lot of your time and effort for little to no monetary reward.
If you tie your service contract to the cost of the system, meaning your service contract is necessary for the purchase of the system, you might as well, just mark up the system and offer the services as an additional product offering.
That way, you make money on the system even if your support services are not needed and you give the customer the option of getting the support if they choose it.
With so many educated IT people out there, selling the system itself at low to no margins is business suicide. If people don't need your support, but need to take the support contract to get the system... you just lost a sale.