Software and Markets (was Re: ultra sparc and linux)

[Robert Bushman]

Free Software is causing significant rethinking of
free market economics. Does it not stand to reason
that "market" and "commerce" are two of the big
words that will have to be reevaluated?

On a larger scale, all forms of intellectual
property are seeing significant upheaval as a
result of the sudden drop to nearly zero marginal
cost of production. The terms "market" and "commerce"
were forged in a world where marginal cost was
*always* significantly non-zero. Applying their
traditional definitions to things like software
is, IMO, outdated.

I would propose that "market" in this case means
the collection of all potential customer machines,
and "commerce" means the acquisition of a product
(by any means and for any price).

On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, George Toft wrote:

> Google is your friend:
> http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/bsa/position
>
> US Retail Market
> January - December 2001
> 1. Redhat: 39,95%
> 2. Mandrake:  33,08%
> 3. Suse:  23,02%
> 4. Corel:  2,33%
> 5. Caldera: 1,12%
> 6. Turbolinux:  0,50%
>
> Market share, by definition, means commercial.
>
>
> However, looking more broadly, as someone else has done here:
> http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1407&lang=en
> on can see that Debian has a higher implementation rate than I had
> previously been made aware of.
>
>
> As far as SuSE being the leading distro in Europe, I could not find any
> European statistics.  I remember reading it some literature they sent me
> some time ago.  Oh well.
>
>
> George
>
>
> Derek Neighbors wrote:
> >
> > > Go with what you know.  If you don't know either Debian os SuSE, I
> > > would suggest SuSE - it has more market share (#1 distro in Europe),
> > > and is a more mainstream distro.
> >
> > Granted Im biased being a Debianite, but I would like to see the numbers
> > that show SuSE has more market share.  It certainly is popular in Europe
> > (I dont know if #1, #1 in Germany perhaps). More mainstream perhaps if
> > mainstream == corporate.  I dispute still that is has more marketshare.
> >
> > Numbers I looked at a while ago had 1-3 as
> >
> > 1. Red Hat (by a lot)
> > 2. Debian
> > 3. Mandrake
> >
> > (and 2-5 were all really close)
> >
> > An interesting side note is its nearly impossible for real numbers,
> > because on like traditional software a vendor cant tell you 'units
> > shipped', the stores cant tell you 'units bought' and with mirrors and
> > cheap CD-R 'units downloaded' is likely in accurate.  An example is I
> > have 10 machines or so running Debian right now, but I borrowed a potato
> > disk from a friend sometime ago and burned me a copy.
> >
> > -Derek
> > ________________________________________________
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> >
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>
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