*countable infinities only

[Michael Scherer]

Le dimanche 17 juin 2012 à 21:54 -0600, Kevin Fenzi a écrit :
> On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 23:21:14 -0400 (EDT)
> Jay Sulzberger <jays at panix.com> wrote:
> 
> > I think 50 million dollars toward buying, and properly arranging
> > the UEFI, of several lots of x86 computers would indeed solve
> > part of the problem you point out.
> > 
> > Why not? 
> 
> Why? 50million dollars is a big order, but I don't see how this would
> change MicroSoft's mind, or the vendors who still wish to sell Windows
> 8 client certified systems. 

Just to put thing in perspective, for 50 millions $, that would mean
around 6 new laptop for each Red hat employees. ( in fact, I think more,
or with better hardware, due to bulk pricing ).

So of course, the question is "what to do with them", and then this
become "resell them", ( and so that mean "become a online hardware
vendor" ( with all the associate cost, like taxes, etc )) or keep them
( that mean in 3/4 years, the money is lost ).

> Out of curiosity, what would be different about these machines you
> propose?
> 
> Secure boot off by default? 
> Secure boot completely removed?
> 
> > What does Red Hat have to lose?
> 
> 50 million dollars? 

Again, to put thing in perspective, that mean budget sponsoring for 8000
FUDCON
( based on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Zurich_2010_Budget ), 
or if we take 73K as the average pay for a software engineer in the US,
around 650 software engineers.  
Again, if we take around 1100 commiters on the kernel
( http://lwn.net/Articles/373405/ ), and 10% coming from Red Hat, that
mean spending 6 time more than what Red hat pay on kernel hacker.

I am sure that we could continue endlessly to show how much that's quite
a lot of money better spent elsewhere. Cause money spent buying laptop
is not money spent writing code.

-- 
Michael Scherer