Re: Free Software How?
- From: Rich Gibbs <richg74@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:52:30 -0500
Sebastian 'lunar' Wiesner said the following, on 12/28/2006 04:18 PM:
General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@xxxxxxxxx> typed
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 19:43:21 +0100, Sebastian 'lunar' Wiesner wrote:
ChrisC <chrispche@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> typedCanonical is owned by Marc Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth is a billionaire
One thing thats niggling me. How can Ubuntu send out free shipitCanonical Ltd. (the company behind the Ubuntu Foundation) gains money
CD's and keep up the cost. You can download for free, you can obtain
applications for free, you get free updates. They have several
domains and websites dedicated to Ubuntu. Who or what is funding all
this? How long can Ubuntu keep this up? Curious thats all.
by providing professional support for its distribution. You can use
the distribution for free, but if you want support, you have to pay.
To many companies professional support is almost more important than
the software itself. They often sign long term support contracts with
the vendor of a piece of software and pay a a great amount of money
for it in addition to the license fees.
Novell and Redhat also gain much of their profit through such support
contracts.
The Ubuntu Foundation itself is a non-commercial institution...
so he can afford to fund Canonical for a long time before it becomes
profitable. In Citizen Kane there is a scene when Kane's banker tells
him that the Inquirer is losing a million dollars a year, Kane replies
that at that rate he'll probably have to close the paper in 60 years.
I'm sure that Shuttleworth feels the same way about Ubuntu, he's
having fun with it so if it loses $10M/year he doesn't care, in 60
years he'll have to shut it down.
Well, in 60 years I'd be around 80 years old and probably not alive
anymore, so what the hell do I care about what comes then... Right now,
Ubuntu works and its fun.
Anyway, a business plan based on support contract seems not too far
fetched today...
The Ubuntu offer to send free CDs seems to have been quite effective as a way to get the new distro out in the "real world" (as we laughingly call it), and to gain some mind share. Ubuntu started at zero and is now one of the more popular distros, which can't be bad for Canonical's support business.
The "free disk" idea is not unique to Ubuntu, BTW. For a few years now, IBM has offered free CD sets of development tools and/or demo applications on request through their "DeveloperWorks" program. I have a few of those, and they have gotten some modest business as a result.
--
Rich Gibbs
richg74@xxxxxxxxx
"If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." (Will Rogers)
.
- References:
- Re: Free Software How?
- From: General Schvantzkoph
- Re: Free Software How?
- From: Sebastian 'lunar' Wiesner
- Re: Free Software How?
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