On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 11:22 am, you wrote: > On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 21:45, Anne Wilson wrote: > > On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 9:38 am, Stephen Kuhn wrote: > > > On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 11:51, Sascha Noyes wrote: > > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > > > > > I'm considering upgrading to silver membership. Not sure yet though. > > > > > > > > Sascha > > > > > > I wish I could say that I was being optimistic about Mandrake right > > > now, but I think that there's going to be a bit of a shake up > > > internally with Mandrake, and in the linux community overall. > > > > 'Fraid so, and I don't want to see Mandrake go. > > > > > For those of us that have to pay USD for things, well, I'll hold onto > > > my money right now and wait until the second quarter of the US > > > financial year before spending it on services or products. > > > > Sorry, Stephen - I don't understand. Could you please explain more to an > > ignorant limey/pommie? > > > > Anne > > Ok...well, first and foremost, all of this is based on pure marketing. > Marketing doesn't care if a product is viable, or foolproof, or even > complete. The people that do the marketing go by demand, public opinion, > and market analysis. Look at Mactintosh and Microsoft. Both are best > known for throwing software to the public because it's expected. None of > it is ever complete or fixed. As per the past 10 years, Microsoft is > expected to release a new OS or version thereof every year. They've > literally kept to exactly that. Whether or not it's viable or complete > or really working doesn't matter at all. > > Redhat, Suse and Slackware literally hold their own - but in the past > six months time, there has been a great demand by the public and by > marketing analysts that a sleeker, more user friendly version of DESKTOP > linux be released - immediately. So, Redhat, Xandros and Mandrake vied > for the top slot. Mandrake did quite well with the initial installation > and the user friendly configuration tools, but the "engine" behind was > not complete - but it was released no matter what. Ditto with Redhat and > version 8 of their distro. Too many "unhappy campers" have been made by > both Redhat and Mandrake right now. And Mandrake really pushed things to > the limits and now they're feeling the crunch from making too many sales > and having to reorganize internally to be able to handle the load - > which is costing them even more (bad planning). Redhat, on the other > hand, have the cash to sit back and wait it out til the next release - > besides, they're partnered with IBM - what better partner to have right > now? Aside from that, Mandrake's marketing was aimed at the end user. > NOT where the money is at. Selling to a few schmoe's here and there > doesn't quite equal selling 10,000 copies to a large corporate entity. > > As things are moving faster than they have in the past four years, the > changes in the linux community are moving swiftly - very swiftly. There > are going to be some tough falls coming - and quite a bit of money lost > - but overall, this is going to end up strengthening the linux community > even moreso with stricter guidelines and more structured "standards". > > Just as an example - you have two blokes - both pay $40USD for a linux > distro. Bloke 1 installs and configures his distro and is able to > quickly configure that distro to be a high-end server, a workstation, a > network monitoring tool, a mail server, a firewall - all in a very short > amount of time. Bloke 2 has to go back through his installation several > times to get his OS to be used for development, or a server. Bloke 1 > gets his up and running in less than 2 hours time. Bloke 2 spends more > than four hours getting his distro right and trying to update drivers > for devices. > > Which is going to win? > That is merely rhetorical, mind you. I'm not trying to put one above the > other - just looking at things from an outsiders perspective - like an > IT manager would if he had to deal with having a tech installing an OS. > The quicker of the two wins. Less time paid to the tech, less time > troubleshooting or fixing. That's the economics of it. > > In the next two to six months, things are going to move very fast, and I > just have this niggling suspicion that Mandrake's quiet internal re-org > is going to become more than just that - and that they're going to be > making some rash decisions that are going to plonk them outta the market > - or knock them back far enough to where they're going to have to fight > to get up again. > > Just my humble opinion based on observation. > > ...not bad for an ex-yank, ya reckon?
Yeah - I understand what you are saying, Stephen, and you could well be right, I just hope that it isn't as bad as it looks. Marketing to the gullible is, as you say, the way to survive, and one of the attractions of linux is getting out of that trap. Yet the company has to survive, and if business partners are not forthcoming, what can they do, no matter how good the product is. On the bad side there is the tendency to rush distros out to meet market expectations. Discussions on this list show that the experience of users is illogical, to say the least. What works well out of the box for one user is hopeless for another. That suggests lack of time and money for more thorough testing. At the same time, financial pressures have caused massive down-sizing, and as has often been seen in industry, overdoing this can mean you are overstretched to the point of emaciation. We have seen US and British companies disappear through the same process. On the good side, Mandrake have innovative ways of solving problems. If they can survive the present financially stressful times they could be well placed for the future. Innovation is very necessary if they are to make money out of open source for the small guy. Unfortunately, there is an expectation that we should have free use of the software and never pay anything towards its upkeep or development. Perhaps it was because they could not afford a full support program that they came up with the idea of actively encouraging user-to-user support via these lists. Whatever, it has proved most helpful. I spoke to two youngsters a couple of weeks ago at a local lug meeting, and heard how they were getting despondent because they had tried another distro, and could get no help at all. Offical help was not forthcoming because they could not afford boxed sets, and if they asked newbie-type questions from news-group type lists they just got flamed. I recommended Mandrake purely on the strength of this list. Market forces are somewhat stacked against a small outfit like Mandrake, but they have something so valuable that I would hate to see them go, which is why I chose to gamble on shares. I suspect you may be right, but I hope not. Anne
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