Your quoted Amazon link and ranking are actually for WP Office for Linux, not Corel Linux. Here's the correct link to Corel Linux OS, which shows it ranking not at 2,011, not 385.
Note the Hot Products listing states at the top: "This list shows the products viewed most often by computershopper.com visitors in the previous week. Click on a product name to get the latest prices and compare merchants. " (italics mine)
So this is merely measuring numbers of hits on product pages. It might indicate product interest, or it might indicate busy marketdroids hitting the pages from different IP addresses. It tells us little about product purchase, less still about deployment.
The retail stats that you quote from IDC and others are also unclear: does that represent the number of units shipped to retailers, or the number that were purchased by customers? Corel has used some unusual discounting to get large numbers of the boxes piled up in retail displays. This practice is sometimes known as "channel stuffing". It is very risky, and market analysts have been noticing it.
The CNet download stats quoted might be more impressive. It takes a lot of interest to download and burn a CD image. But do those number indicate the number of times the user got to Corel Linux's download "go" page on CNet, or completed FTP transfers? I meet a lot of people who attempt to download these images over a modem, give up, and wait for the cover disk to turn up on the magazines.
A more meaningful statistic for us to discuss would be a survey with proper methodology conducted by a market research group (perhaps by phone), taking in home users, corporate, university etc. and breaking the numbers down into relevant categories.
Sorry to be pedantic, but may I point out that the Slashdot article copies BeOpen's title errors: his name is actually spelt "Warwick", like the town. And, er, like the singer, if that helps.:)
Quote from the linked article: "Some of her finds include: Xena: Warrior Princess vet Jay Laga'aia, who's playing a loyal security officer, and Aussie Leeanna Walsman, who'll take on the physically-demanding role of a new highly-killed bounty hunter."
The UK company is called Invensys Plc. A shareholder meeting started today at 10am CET, to discuss the tender offer. The offer is expected to be waved through, with completion by August.
Some years back at a company I once worked at, someone went postal in our US office after being sacked. He may have been sacked unfairly, I don't know, but his response was what I'd call disproportionate: he returned to the server room with a large-ish shotgun, and started blasting away from the doorway at machinery. Everyone dived for cover, including my friend Martin, who wisely chose to hide behind an IBM DASD array the size of a coke machine. The shots went through the first wall of the casing, but didn't even make it through the disks, so Martin was safe. No one was seriously hurt, and the guy got hauled away to the Laughter Academy when his ammo ran out.
I don't think most long-time OSS users are ready to trust Inprise (or Corel if that happens) as a reliable OSS vendor just yet. Senior mgt. at both companies have been at pains lately to assure the markets that they intend to make their money through retail sales of a mainly proprietary product set. It's OSS now, but what about 6 months from now?
I happen to like the Inprise product set, but I wouldn't make it a first choice on a project today, if software freedom was important to the project's successful outcome.
Two RedHat execs told me last week in a formal meeting (lots of witnesses in the room) that 6.1 was going to be launched 18 Oct, to coincide with the launch of their 24 x 7 international support offering.
They weren't very happy when we mentioned that we also use some Mandrake. They went off on a very stern sermon about how Mandrake were freeloading on RH's hard work on the RedHat brand. Then they told us how we were best to stick with them, since they retained "a 70% market share", whatever that means. Not a very Open Source way to market to a corporate customer that's only interested in Linux because it's Open Source. They looked like a couple of Oracle salesmen, who'd been given a few weeks of Linux training in RTP. I think we're going to take a good, hard look at Debian soon.
A lot of interesting observations about SO have been made here already: RAM hunger, excess config, interface hogging, Licence issues, etc. Don't hold your breath for Sun to fix any of this: they have publicly stated that SO is only a "bridge" product for StarPortal.
It's therefore in Sun's commercial interest to drive workstation users off of the giveaway product and onto the portal version, for which they will collect big from the portal operators. I'm not sure yet how that will work out in terms of vendor independence: will you be required to store your docs on the portal operator's disk, etc.? We'll have to wait and see.
Slashdot Mirror
Your quoted Amazon link and ranking are actually for WP Office for Linux, not Corel Linux. Here's the correct link to Corel Linux OS, which shows it ranking not at 2,011, not 385.
You also wrote: "If Corel Linux is dying why is it in the top ten in the Computer Shopper Hot Products listing..."
Note the Hot Products listing states at the top: "This list shows the products viewed most often by computershopper.com visitors in the previous week. Click on a product name to get the latest prices and compare merchants. " (italics mine)
So this is merely measuring numbers of hits on product pages. It might indicate product interest, or it might indicate busy marketdroids hitting the pages from different IP addresses. It tells us little about product purchase, less still about deployment.
The retail stats that you quote from IDC and others are also unclear: does that represent the number of units shipped to retailers, or the number that were purchased by customers? Corel has used some unusual discounting to get large numbers of the boxes piled up in retail displays. This practice is sometimes known as "channel stuffing". It is very risky, and market analysts have been noticing it.
The CNet download stats quoted might be more impressive. It takes a lot of interest to download and burn a CD image. But do those number indicate the number of times the user got to Corel Linux's download "go" page on CNet, or completed FTP transfers? I meet a lot of people who attempt to download these images over a modem, give up, and wait for the cover disk to turn up on the magazines.
A more meaningful statistic for us to discuss would be a survey with proper methodology conducted by a market research group (perhaps by phone), taking in home users, corporate, university etc. and breaking the numbers down into relevant categories.
http://www.stallman.org/saint.html.
--
Jon
(actually a Christian, but at least no longer using vi)
Sorry to be pedantic, but may I point out that the Slashdot article copies BeOpen's title errors: his name is actually spelt "Warwick", like the town. :)
And, er, like the singer, if that helps.
Thanks.
-
j
Quote from the linked article:
"Some of her finds include: Xena: Warrior Princess vet Jay Laga'aia, who's playing a loyal security officer, and Aussie Leeanna Walsman, who'll take on the physically-demanding role of a new highly-killed bounty hunter."
Gosh, that does sound physically demanding.
The UK company is called Invensys Plc. A shareholder meeting started today at 10am CET, to discuss the tender offer. The offer is expected to be waved through, with completion by August.
The day that Alan Cox goes to work for Compaq is the day I suck out my own beard with a straw.
--
j
Some years back at a company I once worked at, someone went postal in our US office after being sacked. He may have been sacked unfairly, I don't know, but his response was what I'd call disproportionate: he returned to the server room with a large-ish shotgun, and started blasting away from the doorway at machinery. Everyone dived for cover, including my friend Martin, who wisely chose to hide behind an IBM DASD array the size of a coke machine. The shots went through the first wall of the casing, but didn't even make it through the disks, so Martin was safe. No one was seriously hurt, and the guy got hauled away to the Laughter Academy when his ammo ran out.
I don't think most long-time OSS users are ready to trust Inprise (or Corel if that happens) as a reliable OSS vendor just yet. Senior mgt. at both companies have been at pains lately to assure the markets that they intend to make their money through retail sales of a mainly proprietary product set. It's OSS now, but what about 6 months from now?
I happen to like the Inprise product set, but I wouldn't make it a first choice on a project today, if software freedom was important to the project's successful outcome.
Two RedHat execs told me last week in a formal meeting (lots of witnesses in the room) that 6.1 was going to be launched 18 Oct, to coincide with the launch of their 24 x 7 international support offering.
They weren't very happy when we mentioned that we also use some Mandrake. They went off on a very stern sermon about how Mandrake were freeloading on RH's hard work on the RedHat brand. Then they told us how we were best to stick with them, since they retained "a 70% market share", whatever that means. Not a very Open Source way to market to a corporate customer that's only interested in Linux because it's Open Source. They looked like a couple of Oracle salesmen, who'd been given a few weeks of Linux training in RTP. I think we're going to take a good, hard look at Debian soon.
--
JF
A lot of interesting observations about SO have been made here already: RAM hunger, excess config, interface hogging, Licence issues, etc. Don't hold your breath for Sun to fix any of this: they have publicly stated that SO is only a "bridge" product for StarPortal.
It's therefore in Sun's commercial interest to drive workstation users off of the giveaway product and onto the portal version, for which they will collect big from the portal operators. I'm not sure yet how that will work out in terms of vendor independence: will you be required to store your docs on the portal operator's disk, etc.? We'll have to wait and see.