open question(s) to RedHat users

On Nov 11, 2003, at 12:41 PM, Deepak Saxena wrote:

> On Nov 11 2003, at 12:32, Chris Gehlker was caught saying:
>> On Nov 11, 2003, at 9:24 AM, Craig White wrote:
>>> Where did you get the idea that Red Hat abandoned the desktop market?
>>
>> From the many reports that said just that.
>>
>>> They have changed the methodology of their packaging and
>>> distribution.
>>> That they have abandoned the desktop market is your own nexus and
>>> simply
>>> not fact.
>>
>> Yes, it is plain now that they are still in the enterprise desktop
>> market. They simply are out of the consumer market.
>>
>>> Did I miss something - what did Nautilus demonstrate?
>>
>> That it is very hard to make money selling an OS in the consumer
>> market. Even MS struggles.
>
> Umm no. Nautilus demonstrated that having just a shiny desktop to sell
> is not enough to grow a business. Nautilus' whole business plan
> was flawed IMHO from the very beggining. You can't just sell a desktop
> to either the consumer or enterprise market, you need a whole package
> of applications around it. It would be akin to M$ selling the explorer
> shell and requiring purchase of a separate set of base applications to
> actually use. Hence Ximian/Suse/Novell. A linux distro w/o a viable
> desktop is useless without apps. And apps/desktop is useless w/o a
> stable distro underneath. No consumer/manager in their right mind would
> pay a support fee to RedHat for the desktop and then go pay another
> support fee to Ximian/Nautilus for another desktop.

I think you misremember how closely Nautilus's idea resembled Red Hat
Network. They were happy to give you the shiny desktop but you were
supposed to subscribe to their online update/support service. And they
really did aim at the consumer. The plans started at $5 a month:
cheaper than AOL. The point of the 'shiny' desktop was to be a setting
for the portal logo the way the windows desktop was a setting for the
AOL logo.

Now you may protest that that what Nautilus was trying to do wasn't
exactly 'selling an os' but Red Hat isn't exactly 'selling an os
either'.