[Gllug] EU patents

[Christopher Hunter]

On Tuesday 01 Jul 2003 8:30 am, Jason Clifford wrote:

/snip/

> We also need a campaign to inform people that the poor reliability of
> certain platforms is not endemic to the whole IT world and that there are
> alternatives that do deliver on the reliability promise.

Unfortunately, reliability is usually very low on the list of priorities.  
Highest on the list is "does it come bundled with "office"?", or "can I have 
it in black?".  Remember - these are the fools that allowed themselves to be 
sold "three-year Warranties" that actually cost more than the hardware, and 
were invalidated if you added ANY hard or software to the original 
configuration!

> It's no use trying to sell a company on better engineering possibilities
> unless they are a software house (and even then their primary interest is
> being able to deliver to their own markets). People simply don't care
> about that when it is offered as an arguement unless it is put into
> specific context - ie easier to avoid vendor lock-in, etc.

Unfortunately, the average computer buyer doesn't care.

> Companies need to see that Free Software offers benefits to their business
> interests and that those benefits are so great as to outway the migration
> costs in both the near and long term.
>
> Those benefits do exist:
>
> - far lower tco

No - the average user will tell you that their computer came with "free 
software" - Windoze and Works pre-loaded.  Why should they buy anything else?

> 	:: less downtime
> 	:: lower support personnel costs
> 	:: more efficient use of computing resources

All the above are probably true, but are usually not taken into consideration 
by the computer buying masses.  (Though this particular support person costs 
MUCH more than any Windoze bod to hire!)

> - freedom to form support partnerships with users' preferred suppliers
>
> 	:: and the availability of support from multiple sources
> 	:: including big names like IBM / HP
> 	:: as well as specialists like RH, SuSE, me, you ;)

Yes - but they still can't go to "PC World" and buy a pre-loaded PC with any 
form of *nix on it (unless you count the Apples...)

> - no risk of premature end of life issues for working systems

Again - they're not interested.  When the computer gets slow, breaks, or a 
shinier new model comes out, they go and shell out their hard-earned again.

> There are lots of others but I leave it for you lot to fill in the blanks.

Sorry to appear negative, but someone has to play devil's advocate!

We need a large vendor (perhaps Dell or some such) to get their heads out of 
the sand, and offer a pre-installed Linux box at a significantly lower retail 
price than the equivalent Windoze-installed hardware.  This is going to be 
difficult because of the subsidies offered to the manufacturers by M$ to 
entice them to pre-install...

All the advocacy, arguement and recommendation is a waste of time until cheap 
domestic systems running Linux become widely available.

Chris



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