On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 02:25, Andi Payn wrote: > On Thursday 06 March 2003 06:17, Adam Williamson wrote: > > If the problem is contractual obligations, perhaps the 9.0 experience > > ought to indicate that such contracts should not be made. > > How do you propose that Mandrake release their software, then? If they wait > until there is a stable release before signing contracts, it will be at least > a month before that release hits the shelves, and even longer before most of > the advertising supporting that release appears. And that's assuming that > they have good relationships with everyone involved (and are willing to pay > for "rush" work in some cases). You can't just call someone and say, "OK, our > release is ready," and get it in stores the next day. > > Now, in the long run, they'd still get out the same number of releases per > year, it's just that there'd be a gap of a couple of months when they first > switched to this new strategy. That doesn't sound too bad, but think about > what it means--it means a couple of months with significantly reduced > revenue, which isn't such a great thing for a company in Mandrake's financial > situation (or, really, any company).
But as someone has pointed out, the current strategy runs the equal risk of producing a stinker release which sells poorly. Buggy releases COST MONEY - if you read all the Mandrake stuff on various Linux sites, you'll *STILL* find comments from people who didn't buy Mandrake 9.0 because they tried the free version and the supermount kernel bug broke their CD-ROM access. Sorry to keep harping on that one bug, but one sufficiently serious bug can be crucial. -- adamw
