G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:

OK, rises to bait (I'm getting so predictable) although I agree with
most of this ;-)

> Suppose you go to your boss and tell him all about Linux and Staroffice:
> 
> - free stuff, so no one is earning money on that stuff?
> - giving away for free?!? you are kidding...
> - then there is no money for supporting the product.

But that's _precisely_ how people make money out of Open Source. You
takes your choice, everything from free support via newsgroups to a team
of dedicated IBM folk available 24/7.
  

> ... Of course we then have to admit that in the Squeak community we only do
> what we like,
> You cannot build a business on our fun:
> - Problems with Squeak under Windows? buy a Mac!
> - Browser problems with the Squeak plugin? change the browser(version)! 

Mmmmm. Or sue Microsoft. Certainly, if I was hiring someone to do Squeak
support for a M$ based business, these are some of the issues I'd expect
them to look at. But instant solutions are no more likely to be
available at Squeak support com than at Microsoft. IIRC, it took Cincom
2 or 3 weeks to isolate and cure the "tiny print" problem people were
experiencing with VisualWorks (eventually tracked down to an
undocumented change Microsoft had made). No one took them to court, and
seems to me that that was a pretty fine effort.

 
> (Although I have to admit that in other communities like SourceForce the
> community lokks much more proficient Apache, PHP, MySQL... and so many
> packages, right-out-the-box (PHPDEV for example))

I think Squeak support is pretty proficient. But the larger the
community (and the Apache and Linux communities are huge, with a much
higher developer to user ratio than M$, for obvious reasons) the quicker
and more wide ranging support is likely to be. 

> 
> Another point is that normal people have habits and want to keep these: If
> you offer a product like StarOffice, that is so different in look and feel,
> then you have to invest a lot of extra time before you can go back to your
> normal work...

Is Star/Open Office _so_ different? I'd think that after 2 hours group
training anyone would be able to make the switch, although it'd probably
take around a week to become equally proficient. I hear that Ford are
looking at switching.... Just think: simply by ditching M$ Office you
save £150, ditch the OS as well and you save around £200 per user.
Chances are that you can leave your 2 yearly upgrades another year or
two. Hell, I've seen it argued that it's cheaper to build a Linux based
system for 500 users (not 500 terminals) around a new IBM mainframe than
it is to do it around Windows 2000.


> And last but not least: You do not need the best product as a businessman,
> you just need the best advertisement and other tricks to grab the market.

The desktop market was always going to be the place Microsoft circled
the wagons. It's also the only place where the user base is hopelessly
uneducated and naive. Elsewhere, Apache has pretty much gobbled up the
webserver market simply because, while it's _not_ the best webserver, it
offers a huge range of features and the best
speed/cost/reliability/configurability/multi-platform compromise. 

Cheers

John
-- 
Reputed to be the reason Windows 2000 was nearly a year late, (paid in
shares M$Ds needed the cash and kudos) Netproject's Eddie Bleasdale has
renewed his challenge to virus writers. The first person to infect his
Linux box wins 10,000 pounds.

http://www.silicon.com/bin/bladerunner?30REQEVENT=&REQAUTH=21046&14001REQSUB=REQINT1=48211