Way back when linux was born we never thought that it would gain such popularity spontaneously.Came a company that decided to take the best of both worlds, a great product together with fast-growing and devoted followers and packaged it up for the corporate/professional world. It seemed to have made a large dent in the competition's product line until one day that company decided to drop the non-corporate followers and focus on where the money is.
My logic says that you now have a "homeless" community and its just a question of time before someone is going to pick them up and even charge them (but not a-la enterprise model).In my mind a company that will do so for the desktop products will guarantee the future for corporate contracts (and possibly switches on the enterprise lines). After all a "small" follower at night is the decision maker during the day - in my company's case case you just lost thousands of desktops that are looking for a new distribution and if we like that "new" distribution we might eventually recommend it for the enterprise.
What was the thinking behind your latest decision with regards to the linux community and if money was the issue why weren't you considering raising the price or charging for your current offering?
in our organization OUR evaluation/recommendation affects what gets installed on few thousands of systems (previously RH and currently we are evaluating the next production-quality distribution). When I say OURS I mean the dev. team not the head of the IT department. Further, I know that we are not the only ones out there having such an impact
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Way back when linux was born we never thought that it would gain such popularity spontaneously.Came a company that decided to take the best of both worlds, a great product together with fast-growing and devoted followers and packaged it up for the corporate/professional world. It seemed to have made a large dent in the competition's product line until one day that company decided to drop the non-corporate followers and focus on where the money is. My logic says that you now have a "homeless" community and its just a question of time before someone is going to pick them up and even charge them (but not a-la enterprise model).In my mind a company that will do so for the desktop products will guarantee the future for corporate contracts (and possibly switches on the enterprise lines). After all a "small" follower at night is the decision maker during the day - in my company's case case you just lost thousands of desktops that are looking for a new distribution and if we like that "new" distribution we might eventually recommend it for the enterprise. What was the thinking behind your latest decision with regards to the linux community and if money was the issue why weren't you considering raising the price or charging for your current offering?
in our organization OUR evaluation/recommendation affects what gets installed on few thousands of systems (previously RH and currently we are evaluating the next production-quality distribution). When I say OURS I mean the dev. team not the head of the IT department. Further, I know that we are not the only ones out there having such an impact