From: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
Organization: Boundaries Unlimited
To: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>
Subject: Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 03:07:07 -0600
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Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>, Brian Gerst <bgerst@didntduck.org>,
       Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>,
       William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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On Tuesday 13 December 2005 01:56, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> >                                t best.
> >
> > > And you don't have to be Linux user to refuse closed hardware. Having
> > > option in future is always good.x
> >
> > If Linux desktop users are less than 5% of the laptop buying population,
> > a more effective technique would be to focus purchases on small companies
> > that _do_ provide things we can use.
>
> however, in areas where margins are really thin, like consumer PC
> hardware, 5% of revenue is the difference between a loss and a profit.

With thin margins, 5% of volume isn't the same thing as 5% revenue.  It may be 
5% of _profit_, but unless fixed costs being amortized are a dominant factor 
the whole point of thin margins is that it costs you almost as much to 
produce as you sell it for.

More importantly, if they can't trace the loss back to what made the 
difference, then it doesn't matter.  And very few things at this level have 
only one cause.  When less than 1% of the planet's population ever bought the 
product in the first place, a few more not buying it really doesn't register 
easily.  Making a change may net you $5 million and cost you $10 million 
elsewhere.  (Hence boycotts either not being noticed or being attributed to 
tidal forces and brownian motion.  And most of them simply _aren't_ big 
enough to make a difference.  There are groups out that regularly claim 
responsibility for the sun coming up.  Decision makers learn to filter this 
stuff out.)

Now large customers that purchase lots of stuff in blocks can easily get their 
needs noticed at the negotiating table.  "Not supporting X will cost your 
company this $$$ million contract".  They don't have to find this out via 
data mining or surveys, there's a big check with explicit strings attached.

> And if we can have official 'works well' and 'don't buy' lists, the PR
> around that can help make that impact, especially if people who don't
> run linux yet but might in the future also start to pay attention to
> this list.

Bad publicity, and good publicity for competitors, is something that can get 
noticed, yes.  But being able to translate it into actual dollar values is 
noticeably more effective.  Showing an $x dollar market that wouldn't exist 
without Linux-motivated purchases is one way to do that.

Expecting windows users to make purchasing decisions based on a Linux 
compatability list goes a bit beyond wishful thinking, though.

Rob
-- 
Steve Ballmer: Innovation!  Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
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