A million copies is likely very generous. We do not have their number in
front of us, perhaps we could be thankful that they are making a profit.
keith smith wrote:
> I don't get it. What real R&D is there for a distribution? At $40.00
> retail RH gets about $20.00. A few $ for a box and a few disks and a
> small manual. Maybe $5.00 in direct cost.
>
> Most of the real production is free. M$ made millions+++++ selling
> DOS for $30.00 a pop.
>
> Look at the Debian model. A good distribution. Package management is
> its selling point. It is not nicely packaged, however it is good.... if
> you have some understanding of how to configure it. Debian is not
> commercial. I don'tknow a single person that has paid for Debian, Yet
> They Survive....
>
> Look at Mandrake. It installed on my laptop and _everything_ works.
> I've heard some grumbling about $ from them........ I'll be they keep
> selling a boxed version.
>
> From my limited knowledge of Linux, I feel relatively confident that
> with $5000.00 worth of equipment, a DSL connection and two other fellas,
> we could product a nice distribution of Linux that would be somewhat
> easy to install and comprehensive.
>
> Given my model, A million copies sold at $10.00 each (about $19.99
> retail) with $300,000 in cost would create a nice cash flow wouldn't you
> say?
>
> Keith
>
>
>
>
> */david uhlman <plug_mail@50km.com>/* wrote:
>
> One only need to look as far as Redhat's sec filings to see that retail
> costs them more than it makes them. Their last 10K and recent 8K really
> show the difference though.
>
> Revenue in thousands
> (Subscription & service)
> Enterprise technologies $14,918 $12,289 $6,694
> Retail 3,121 4,462 2,941
> Embedded 490 646 761
>
> (Service)
> Enterprise technologies 9,147 9,039 9,993
> Embedded development services 1,173 746 845
>
> COGS
> (subscription)
> Enterprise technologies and
> retail 2,220 2,974 1,930
> Embedded 90 129 129
>
> (service)
> Enterprise technologies 4,976 4,865 4,629
> Embedded development services 695 784 931
>
> Research and development 6,104 5,779 4,817
>
> In a nutshell there R&D costs continue to rise for consumer Redhat while
> there retails revenues declined by a 20%. Enterprise services account
> for $25mil l, retail $3.2mill down 20% from last year.
>
> I think as well that a redhat based project that aims for more stability
> than fedora will emerge off of the RH ES platforms source rpms
> repository. All it really needs is a packger and installer, say
> anaconda.
>
> A lot more Linux companies are going to be moving to this model like it
> or not. If you want nicely packaged and iso-ed distributions you are
> going to have to pay for that in the future, basic economics. There will
> always be debian but that doesn't necessarily meet the needs of many of
> the current redhatters.
>
> I will say though that redhat needs to be careful not to alienate too
> much the base of developers and contributors that have made it so
> successful. I think you will see some concessions on this front over the
> next year or two.
>
> Sincerely,
> David Uhlman
> CTO 50KM Inc.
>
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=------------------------------ /v\ ----------------------------=
Robert Wultsch // \\ robert.wultsch@asu.edu
Linux User /( )\ AIM:sheepsleep7
Don't fear the penguins ^^-^^ (602)6927564
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