On Jun 6, 2006, at 5:13 AM, Maddog wrote:
My point was that most folks will pay for convenience. Most folks
will pay for a Linspire or Mandriva edition because it has all the
conveniences built in (i.e. an autoplay DVD player, etc.). As far
as marketing crap I believe you way oversimplified it. If people
will pay for it you now have a business model.
You need enough people to pay enough such that your take-home
(profit) provides enough incentive to you. This can be one person
paying you $1,000,000 or 1000 people paying you $1,200 each, or
1,000,000 people paying you $2 each. (There are transaction costs,
which I've tried to show.)
You nailed it with your statement about valuing freedion over
market share. The only folks in that boat are the folks with the
technical know how, time and drive to make a FOSS product work
(highly intelligent guys like yoursself). Can you put together a
Debian or Ubuntu, et al system for free? Yes. Will the majority of
folks in the world take the time to do it and troubleshoot it when
it breaks? No. Not because their time is not free but because they
can pay Mandriva $129 and get a working system out of the box and
when it breaks they can contact somone to fix it. That is worth
$129 and that is why Mandriva is succeeding.
People buy luxury cars, too. But the majority don't, they drive
Toyotas. There is money to be made all over the scale from 'it
didn't cost' to 'you can buy better, but you can't pay more'.
As far as Wi-Fi being free. Who are you kidding? There is no such
thing as a free lunch. Here in Hawaii the old boys all want a cut.
it was this way on the mainland too (years ago).
It will never be free here.
Never is a long time.
I ran into a guy the other day who is proposing totally free Wi-Fi.
Heh, it's supported by driving folks to his website to buy products
and services (and the hotels are resisting because if someone buys
something from the website while on hotel property, they want a
cut) and if it doesn't work (i.e. make his site more profitable)?
It'll shut down. There is going to have to be some kind of business
model to support free hotspots.
For most situations, your customers will demand it, and the marginal
cost of adding it is so low that you'll do it.
Paid WiFi is like a pay toilet. You may get some people to pay, but
you'll piss-off most of us.
Bandwidth and equipment cost money and I don't see any companies
lining up to donate either.
Bandwidth... what do you know about bandwidth charges?
MD
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "LUAU" <luau@lists.hosef.org>
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 10:17 PM
Subject: Re: [LUAU] Ubuntu... Legalities
On Jun 5, 2006, at 8:12 PM, Maddog wrote:
Jim,
One point I think most of the FOSS community misses is that it's
great if you have the technical knowhow to find, install and
troubleshoot these free softwares. The majority of users in the
world either don't have the time, or don't have the expertise to
do that or simply would rather point and click. Probably why
Linspire has half a chance to get a foothold in replacing
Windows XP
From what I can tell, (k)unbuntu is as easy to drive as linspire,
and costs less.
If you had a choice to buy gas for $3.35/gallon right down the
street on King Street or drive to Millilani (if you live in
town) and pay $3.09/gallon, where would you most like fuel up? A
large majority would go to the more expensive station out of
convenience.
I think you'll find they're "better off" paying the $3.35/gallon
at the local station.
Lets say you've got a car with a big tank, perhaps 20 gallons,
and you manage to arrive in Millilani with 1/4 tank or less, so
you can manage to squeeze 16 gallons in on your fill-up. You've
"saved" 16 x ($3.35 - $3.09), or $4.16 on your fill-up, and you
had to drive to Millilani and back.
Google says its 17.9 miles from Lionel's 76 at 1505 S King St,
Honolulu, HI 96826
to the Chevron a t95-130 Kamehameha Hwy, Mililani Town, HI 96789
If you burn just 1 gallon of gas, (your car averages 36 mpg,
which I find unlikely) you've only saved $1.07, and you have yet
to consider what your time is worth. (Google says its 30 minutes
each way.) I find it more likely that your car gets around
22mpg, so it cost you $5.05 in gas to drive to Millilani and
back. Even if you manage to arrive running on fumes (with an
empty tank) you've spent $5.05 to "save" $5.20.
This doesn't even make sense if you're driving something that
holds a lot of gas, because most of these vehicles guzzle gas.
GM rates Hummer H2 at 10-13 mpg. The Ford Expedition gets 14-19
mpg, and the three-quarter ton Chevy Suburban gets 13-17 mpg.
The standard H2 holds 32 gallons, the Expedition holds 28 gallons
and the 3/4 Ton Suburban holds 26 gallons. We'll assume that
you can manage to arrive in Millilani running on fumes
(impossible with these fuel injected engines, and same will
shorten the life of the fuel pump, but I digress, and give you
the benefit of doubt.)
Suburban: 26 * $0.26 = $6.76 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from
Mililani: $6.51
Expedition: 28 * $0.26 = $7.28 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from
Mililani: $5.82
H2 32 * $0.26 = $8.32 fuel savings, cost to drive to/from
Mililani: $8.51
at the other end of the scale:
Prius 51mpg (highway) and holds 11.9 gallons. $3.09 fuel
savings, cost to drive to/from Mililani: $2.17
Keep running the numbers, it starts to make sense to drive to
Millilani if your car holds about 100 gallons of fuel.
There are societal issues that prevent FOSS from becoming
dominant. Maybe if Linux distributions concentrated on that they
would be able to infiltrate the market to a higher degree.
Conquering the market (especially while sweeping freedom under
the rug) is the stance taken by many "open source" advocates.
Others (including Free Software advocates) value freedom over
'market share'.
I think the new wireless models have taken notice, free with
lots of ads or pay a bit for no ads. We'll see if it works but
as I recall an ISP tried that without success.
unlicensed wireless will only succeed when its free ($0 cost).
I say this as the former CTO of Wayport (a for-pay "hotspot"
ISP), with a lot of wireless experience ever since. Point in
fact, we sell gear to a lo of folks who are trying to install for-
pay wireless.
I think any forced ads will be quickly defeated.
Maybe a combo FOSS and for pay model works? Mandriva seems to
live by it and judging by the bottom line they have had some
success.
There is value in support, and there is money in customization,
because nobody's time is "free" (at least, not all the time).
As for the "Windows vs. Linux: The Great Battle" stance, it is
very much a Marketing Myth. The only people who believe this myth
are people who are susceptible to believing marketing crap.
I've found that companies trust suppliers who respect their
choices. That cuts both ways.
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