[CentOS] Vote For CentOS :) -- economies of scale, and 6 v. 18-month shelf-life

Sat Jun 4 16:08:58 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>

On Sat, 2005-06-04 at 08:40 -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
> They genuinely thought that this was the only way; people who are in the
> know have stated that there are still warehouses full of boxed sets of
> Red Hat Linux 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x.  With RHEL they sell fewer boxes, but
> sell more product, driving the cost down and making it possible for
> them to employ some of the best open source hackers around, like
> Ulrich Drepper, Alan Cox, Jacob Jelinek, Tom Lane, and many others. 

It's all about economies of scale.  The less you sell compared to your
competitor, the higher price you have to sell to match your competitor.

I also want to point out that the 18-month release cycle for a product
is heavily preferred by CompUSA and other retailers.  They have a lot of
old stock of 6-month release cycle products that got returned to Red
Hat.

Novell is seeing the same thing happen with 6-month SuSE Linux
Professional v. their new 18-month Novell Linux Desktop.  So like Red
Hat stopped selling Red Hat Linux 9 in the stores and switched to Red
Hat Professional Workstation (RHEL WS), now Red Hat Desktop (also RHEL
WS), I seriously doubt we'll see a SuSE Linux product in a retail box
come version 10.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you
to be anything but richer than you.  Any tax rate that penalizes them
will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below
them).  Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele-
mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism.
So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work.  ;->