On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 12:33, Randy Vice wrote:
Question is, now that RH has "dumped" me, should I trust them a second time with RHE or go with Novell/SuSE for enterpise level support for my home server? Or will Fedora support be enough for my taste? Guess time will tell.
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Randy
That is your choice. If you see it as being dumped, you are free to go elsewhere, as is any customer of any company. You have a choice, as long as the other vendors are also financially viable and around to provide you that choice. We are just beginning to see the shake-out of the commercial Linux market and it will take time for the dust to settle, maybe a few years. Is RH taking a risk here? Sure....but the bigger risk is to do nothing.
People are hesitant when there is change, because change means unknowns...
Fedora Support is community based. If you need to be able to call somebody, then Fedora is not for you. Simple decision. That leaves you with few other choices for paid professional support.
Novell/SUSE is an unproven commodity at this point, given Novell's less than stellar past history with acquisitions. Maybe they will get it right this time, maybe not. Management changes can result in fundamental direction changes for companies, despite SUSE's past history. If you think that this forum has a spectrum of opinion, go read SlashDot, where all the KDE advocates are concerned about the Novell/SUSE/Ximian triangle, SUSE users are concerned about Novell's ability to do this well and yet others about a U.S. company taking over a European distro....
Personally, I would rather see RH financially viable, rather than trying to be everything to everybody. If that means that they have to give up 20% of their present market (or whatever that number is) to achieve that goal, so be it.
I am a firm believer in Pareto's 80/20 Rule:
1. Develop a product to meet the needs of 80% of your target marketplace. Meeting the needs of the other 20% will bankrupt you.
There is also something in business known as "opportunity cost". If I have finite funds and resources, where do I put them? Do I allocate them to something that has a small chance of being profitable or something that has a larger chance of being profitable? Guess where I allocate my finite resources?
The Linux desktop today is not profitable and until fundamental changes take place in the market, that will continue to be the case. That goes for the home web/ftp server market as well...
Those of us, myself included, who paid for RHN, more thank likely got off cheaply, because it is my guess that the revenues from the larger enterprise customers subsidized the costs for us small business users. If the desktop/small business RHN service was stand-alone profitable, I suspect that we would not be engaged in this debate.
If Novell/SUSE/Ximian sees this as an opportunity to take desktop share away from RH, let them go after it. There is nothing like a little competition to drive people. If they can help make it a viable market, ultimately, that will help everyone. In a high tide, everybody's boat floats higher. However, there is no guarantee of that near term.
Marc