A number of people have mentioned that IDC is "only covering sales, so they won't see the real growth."... untrue. IDC performs surveys of current installed base, future plans for installs, etc. So: they are covering the right numbers, independent of how the companies purchased those systems.
People have also complained about how they are "only counting the commercial distributions". Not true again. The IDC article said they would only cover the commercial distributions. That is a very different matter. It means they will provide data, reports, recommendations, etc for the commercial versions. This does mean they won't be recommending that people go and install Debian, but it does not mean that they won't be counting Debian installations in their surveys.
IDC is a very professional organization. They are also quite independent of vendors such as Microsoft because they are very well-paid to be independent. This means that we will be seeing some very positive, neutral coverage of our favorite little Operating System That Could.
The fact that people pay good money to read their reports should indicate just how well-respected they are. It also means that they now believe there is a market for reports on Linux (i.e. they will invest the time/resources into them because they believe they can sell them). That alone is wonderful news, even though we won't be able to read them.
I'm glad that he has taken the time to do a careful analysis and prepare a well thought out response. By doing this, he is helping all of us. He's also quite in the right to point out that Eric was wrong when he said the thing was OSD-compliant.
That is infeasible. The company just spent millions. Are you suggesting that they toss that and spend MORE millions. No way. They've just been locked into the vendor's business plan until their future expected losses exceeds the costs of changing solutions (in terms of software, training, support, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
A number of people have mentioned that IDC is "only covering sales, so they won't see the real growth." ... untrue. IDC performs surveys of current installed base, future plans for installs, etc. So: they are covering the right numbers, independent of how the companies purchased those systems.
People have also complained about how they are "only counting the commercial distributions". Not true again. The IDC article said they would only cover the commercial distributions. That is a very different matter. It means they will provide data, reports, recommendations, etc for the commercial versions. This does mean they won't be recommending that people go and install Debian, but it does not mean that they won't be counting Debian installations in their surveys.
IDC is a very professional organization. They are also quite independent of vendors such as Microsoft because they are very well-paid to be independent. This means that we will be seeing some very positive, neutral coverage of our favorite little Operating System That Could.
The fact that people pay good money to read their reports should indicate just how well-respected they are. It also means that they now believe there is a market for reports on Linux (i.e. they will invest the time/resources into them because they believe they can sell them). That alone is wonderful news, even though we won't be able to read them.
This is great news, overall. Be happy.
hello!?
he's talking about growth in the *market* size, not the source code.
sheesh.
what's your problem?
I'm glad that he has taken the time to do a careful analysis and prepare a well thought out response. By doing this, he is helping all of us. He's also quite in the right to point out that Eric was wrong when he said the thing was OSD-compliant.
thx Bruce!
Please visit www.cdin.org for info.
That is infeasible. The company just spent millions. Are you suggesting that they toss that and spend MORE millions. No way. They've just been locked into the vendor's business plan until their future expected losses exceeds the costs of changing solutions (in terms of software, training, support, etc).
:-)
Eric's comment stands. Yours doesn't