On 09/10/06 21:20 +0530, Rony wrote: <snip> > So the bottom line is that FOSS cannot make money on sales. They can > only make money through service and customization. This happens only for > big customers. Thats why the home or small office customers remain > untouched by FOSS companies. Thats where commercial closed software
*Sigh*. The home user will *NOT* pay money for software, unless forced to. I don't know of too many small business owners who want to pay for software either, unless it directly affects their revenue/profit generation. So Tally will be bought, Office and Windows will be copied. > fills the gap. If FOSS versions are available for doing the same tasks, > the customer will simply download that software and use it for free. He > still doesn't generate revenue for the FOSS maker. > Pssst, Redhat became profitable after dropping their support for small customers. How much revenue do you think Microsoft actually gets from home users (or small businesses)? And you do know that OEM versions of Windows come with no support whatsoever? Notice that Microsoft fixes DRM flaws in three days, but regular users have to wait for a few weeks (to months) to get patches for exploitable bugs. Who do you think their real customers are? The 90/10 rule applies for profitable customers (90% of your customer base will not give you a profit, 10% will). Also, if you notice, service is a far more profitable market than pure sales (MSFT is desperate to break into the service market, IBM generates very large profits from service. IBM even sold the PC division because it wasn't generating enough profits.). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
