What price do you want?

[Buck]

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-admin at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-admin at redhat.com]
On Behalf Of Paul Gear
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 8:15 PM
To: fedora-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: What price do you want?

Snip
\quote
Scenario #1: Work, private school

4 servers (mostly <1 year old, only 1 is a "real server", the rest are
just decent PCs with 2 HDs), expanding to around 7 soon: RHN basic
subscription for RHL is quite affordable at US$60/server/year, but i'd
like the ability to update all outstanding all servers at once.  Paying
a higher price to get this feature would be fine, say,
US$65-75/server/year.
Quote\

I could live with your above scenario

\quote

Scenario #2: Home network

I have 3 full-time servers (2 firewalls & a DMZ server), 1 workstation,
and various other installs for testing.  I prefer to run the same
distribution on my desktop and servers.  I also don't have the time or
need to upgrade all of my machines every 6-9 months, so i would likely
not want to run Fedora.

In this case a yearly subscription where i could install RHEL on an
unlimited number of my personal machines would be ideal.  Something
around the US$100-200 might be OK (although it might be too high for
some people).
Quote\

I would make myself afford the $100 for AS as an educational tool.  I
would probably force myself to budget $200 for it after I am more
comfortable installing and using Linux.  I would agree it would be worth
it but it would cramp my budget.

\quote
Scenario #3: Volunteer at a small tertiary college

6 "servers" (all >4 years old, no "real servers", the majority are in
the Pentium 100-266 range), 1 on-site support workstation, most support
done remotely.

For this organisation, even RHN basic subscription is out of the
question in terms of cost - there is no IT department, and no IT budget
(or what little there is gets spent on hardware).  In this case, i would
prefer a flat fee as per my home machines, or student-based licensing.
Quote\

If the school can buy 6 servers and however many workstations, it can
come up with $100 for unlimited software with only update support.
(IMNSHO)




\quote
In all of the above cases, i'd really like a set of CDs/DVDs delivered
to me.   They don't have to be pretty, just functional.  The main reason
for this is that on current bandwidth prices, it would cost me a minimum
of AU$168 to download a 3 x 700 Mb CD set.
Quote\

I assume you would agree to pay shipping.

\quote
I also think that for any non-profit use (home, education, etc.), it
would not be too much to ask that we be able to use RHEL AS rather than
the more limited ES or WS.  It won't be too long before entry-level
servers will come with Itanium or Opteron processors.
Quote\

Except for the School, I believe it would be beneficial to Red Hat to do
that.  Just think, if I could keep a copy of the latest release of AS (I
could download them) to learn from, I would better have the confidence
to convince my clientele that it is better and more affordable than
windows in the long run. (Pending their annual support fees after the
first year, of course.)


\quote
For scenarios 2 & 3 above, i have no problem with the updates being via
mirror sites and being manual to apply (e.g. have to run apt-get on each
machine or login to RHN demo with separate accounts).  Paying so little,
i don't expect to get a big share of Red Hat's bandwidth.
Quote\

I would want an intermediate update program for my non-profit and low
end edu purposes.  I would want a utility that finds all the necessary
updates for all my computers and downloads each RPM.  Then I would want
each computer to have a customized up2date that sees the new packages,
checks to see if it needs one, and automatically installs it from where
I downloaded them to. That would be cross beneficial to Red Hat and me
as I have less work and RH only uses the bandwidth for one of my
computers.  All my other computers would get them from me.

\quote
Note that my concern in all of these scenarios is the affordability for
home & non-profit organisations.  If it was for work, i'd just make the
boss shell out for RHEL ES or WS.
Quote\

I'd make my client shell out for what ever version is needed whether it
is AS or ES.  I am still not sure about WS.  Sorry, but in my area
Windose is still better supported software wise and too many people are
locked in by special software that just isn't available on other
machines.  Besides, I can't see how it saves my client anything to
uninstall XP from the computer he just bought and then $200 for another
OS.  (MS Monopoly practices at work).

I also add one more feature.  A discount for us Value Added Resellers so
we can profit on the sale or give our client a discount.  Remember, we
sell it, we install it and we are there to call tech support if it is
needed.  Plus, since we are more familiar with it, we would need to call
tech support but once for one problem.  After that we have the answer
and won't have to call back on it.  World wide, that would result in a
number of phone techs not being needed which saves Red Hat more money.


Looking back on this I see the following between the two of us:

You and I each pay Red Hat $100 for AS as VARs.  You pay postage and we
both agree not to install the software anywhere but at home.  Our first
sale cost full retail additional sales are discounted $50 for ES and
$200 for AS and $25 for WS.  

I sell two ES accounts for $650, you sell ??? (I'll assume 4 for ES for
this scenario) to your company.  You sell 7 up2date contracts for $75
each, and sell your non-profit company a $100 support package.  

What does Red Hat make?  They make $2725 and probably only support two
telephone calls.  Additionally, what will we recommend to our next
clients or when our clientele wants to expand?

Multiply this by 100 VARs and Red Hat just made 272,500 on a bunch of
deadbeats wanting free software.  

(jk about the deadbeats, but maybe that's how they look at us.)

Some of these "VARs" will be RHCEs and sell a lot more systems than you
and I will, all because we got a copy of AS for $100.  Since many sales
can be handled on the internet, three VAR sales per day would cover the
expenses before the VARs sell the first item.  A contract agreement for
the VAR not to distribute the product without paying RH their due fee
would penalize us in court if we broke the contract, an incentive to
behave.  Would this make it easier to get it in the hands of those
wanting to steal it?  No one has ever stolen a Windows product with all
its protection, why would they want to steal Linux?  (like a copy of AS
won't be on the Warez site within 48 hours of its release). It won't
stop thieves from stealing a copy but some of them will be willing to
pay the $100 for the updates and thus be or become legitimate.

Just my $.02 worth.

Buck