Hi Sridhar,
Ever heard of an Atari? Fabulous engineering - rotten marketing.
Actually, it was more than that. The company's management made some
_really_
stupid decisions. The best thing Atari's marketing dept ever did was to
rename
the arcade game Puck Man to Pac Man before it was released. They were
afraid
that vandals would scratch out part of the P in Puck to make it look
like
something else :)
*** I did hear that one - but it was actually a TP problem from their
legal dept. :-)
Would you believe the name Puck is heavily registered around the world?
But it was a great system - and it died for lack of marketing nous, not even
clout - just nous.
Ever wonder why countries like Japan and South Korea were able to grow
so
fast
** In a word, no. They were essentially manufactured by the
West,
the USA in particular. I did spend a considerable time going in and out
of
the country many years ago. Very simple people the Japanese. It was and
is a
feudal system. The economic difficulties were simply the end of the
game
plan. The tide now goes out. 11 years ago Kilneth corrected a paper of
mine
in which I predicted the breakpoint of the Japanese economy to be tied
to a
10,000 range break and in one day convinced me it would be no lower than
15k. before it was irrecoverable. Clue? Value of downtown Tokyo Real
Estate
I'm sorry, but that is an incredibly simplistic view. I have written a few
academic papers on the topic, and I can tell you that it is far more
complex
than that. Note that I did say Among other things when giving my reason.
US
relations were very important, but they were not the sole reason.
I would be interested in anything novel you have written on the
subject if it is available.
Most of my information came from the horses mouth as a rule. Kilneth and I
both worked for the Owners of The World in different ways at different
times. Thus, we had friends in high places as good servants. :-)
Ever heard of the Mountain Of Gold japanese hypothesis? Unless one
understands that, you can never understand how easy it is to fool the
Japanese. No wonder they get so mad! It has been done to the dog people
for centuries.
Australians know how it feels.
BTW: Not a single expert in Academe even had a clue what was to, or what
happened to Nippon. Not a whisper. But in the real world it was common
knowledge - especially to the erudite few in Japan. A very good friend of
mine - a financial leader in Japan, outlined the pattern step-by-step to me
shortly before he died, while I was visiting him and I was only amazed that
he didn't understand it long beforehand. But I was born a cynic
and don't ever remember believing in Santa Claus...
Perhaps, but you are still yet to prove that marketing is the panacea you
claim
it is.
*** Oh it is certainly no panacea - it is WHY we are in the state we are
in - for the good and the bad aspects. It is simply vital. I simply know
how it works - like understanding Catholicism or Islam. It is simply there
and a fact of life to be dealt with/capitalised upon.
As I keep saying to people Don't shoot the messenger! :-)
If your product was available in infinite quantities for free, why would
anyone
pay $900 for it? That's what free software is like. A distro/developer
adds a
certain feature. The next second everyone has it, because the source code
is
open. Why bother getting Ximian GNOME for Mandrake when Mandrakesoft have
already taken the best bits of Ximian code and included it in their core
distro?
* A good example of the actual possibilities seems to be in the
approach of the Codeweavers people.
I liked the CEO's presentation. I just don't like their chances out there
LINUX can have its community but it NEEDS a market.
The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1984. Since then, free
software
volunteers have writen a UNIX-like OS from scratch, without any major
funding or
help from corporations. This is still mostly the case today. It doesn't
NEED a
market; it has proven itself to be very capable of surviving on its own.
** Not quite true - all of the attempts have been funded to some
degree - wastefully -but funded. As for surviving.. do you know there
is a very active network of die-hard Atari people out there, still???
Apple is surviving... MS is making the market.
(BTW I got warned off for writing a thing called the real X plan last
year based on how X actually makes its money out of thin air.. and
that was for a private circulation magazine! The eyes are
everywhere...) :-)
Those masochists who download all the freebies and do nothing to
contribute
are neither Geeks ( who are out there designing things like Gnome and
KDE
etc) nor a market. They are a complete DRAIN on the real system.
Who cares if they go to another dying distro?
This may be true of users of non-free OSs (e.g. BeOS), but there are
plenty of
ways for one
