Fedora and the System Administrator

[Buck]

Red Hat does not have to charge their prices to stay solvent.  Their
only business need is to increase productivity and profit.  It is now a
publicly traded company and has a responsibility to the stock holders
(whether or not I like it).  As for losing business, there are many
times in which losing customers is more profitable than keeping them.  I
started my home based business servicing home computers on-site at a low
rate.  After a while, I was constantly driving, working or talking on
the phone.  I eventually tripled my rates, dropped most of my home
support and retained 3 commercial customers.  Even though I lost my one
biggest account, I only needed to work about 1 or two days a week and my
"keep" pay was the same as when I was busting my @$$ all week long.
Likewise, Red Hat is probably catering to their "million-dollar"
accounts that require less overhead to service and dropping their
customers that might be making a profit, but costs them more to service
and support.  Sure, they may lose 25% of their "business" but what
remains will be much more profitable leaving them with more time and
resources to service their contracts, improve their product and work
with Fedora.  

Well, that's my $.02 (or less) worth.

Really, it's just business.  

Buck

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-admin at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-admin at redhat.com]
On Behalf Of David Holden
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 5:17 AM
To: fedora-list at redhat.com; Benjamin J. Weiss; Alexandre Oliva
Cc: fedora-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: Fedora and the System Administrator


On Wednesday 01 Oct 2003 1:43 am, Benjamin J. Weiss wrote:
>

If redhat can only stay solvent by charging $349 for there stable linux 
(remember thats the "cheap" version isn't AS > $1000) I find it very
worrying 
for the competitiveness of Linux generally. In the short term I think
they 
will make more money from people who will find it too costly to move to 
another OS but in the longer term I think they will lose a lot of
business.

Dave.



-- 
Dr. David Holden. (Systems Developer)
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