On Fri, 2002-12-27 at 06:03, Jason Straight wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Friday 27 December 2002 01:43 am, SI Reasoning wrote: > > This would be a mistake. The best thing about having the iso out before > > the boxed set is that you have all of these people testing and reporting > > problems back to get fixed. By the time the boxed set is available, many > > bugs have been squished and the paying user gets a very fine distro. It > > is really as if the final is really a final release candidate and one > > gets a whole lot more eyes to help clean everything up before the boxed > > set is available. I think that is a huge benefit. > > That's funny - I decided against buying Mandrake CD's when I saw that what was > offered on the shelf at Wal-Mart was a release candidate snapshot from > cooker. Why pay $50 for what was older than what I could download? I'd rather > just give the $ straight to mdk to have access to the iso's. > > I really don't think the box set gains anything by having the iso's out early. > The boxed sets aren't necessarily for techies such as ourselves. They are gobbled up by end users who do want a smooth package when they install. Having a month or so to iron our the remaining issues helps tremendously in having a much more stable product to the end user. Mandrake's ability to search and install updates during the install procedure helps to make this possible.
> > I believe Mandrake's best shot is capturing market share by getting as > > many people to use their software as possible. Here is a simple plan: > > > > Create a demo cd ala Knoppix and try and bundle with everything you can > > (new computer, etc). > > I don't agree with neutreware. If you offer a free software that is inferior > in any way to the original then how are you advertising for the product? What > you are doing is tainting the market by providing a falsely negative image of > your product. > > I don't think this is neutraware. For techies the isos are still available, but for newbies, a slimmed down version that just works when booted would encourage exploration without risk. The reason it is slimmed down is that it will need to run off a single cd. I though it would be cool to allow for an install from the demo cd but that may not even be necessary, it would be fine for a dsl/cable user doing a network install but modem users would most likely want to buy a boxed set and the demo is really something that would cater to the end user. There is an initial fear of trying something new but people don't seem to fear risk free demo's, especially if something "free" that they want (such as free online minutes" are available. I believe that this is the best way to get Mandrake in end user's hands and these are the people most likely to pay money for the services. I don't think it would be good practice to try and extract too much from the tech community that puts in quite a few hours trying to make Mandrake better and act as an unpaid support service in many cases. These are the people that make distros like Mandrake so strong that they can compete with the much better funded organizations such as Redhat (and Microsoft). > - -- > Jason Straight > ICQ: 1796276 > PGP: http://www.jeetkunedomaster.net/~jason/pubkey.asc > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) > > iQCVAwUBPgxBmRFHZPcobeHxAQIjQAP/Q77MU8D4l6XrRkx0//KvBNi5IILk1anz > VSDOTpW4+Rp+WqsRIOiYt+Lh7/uRvawAyW2xlQTeeJw4ASOwJLa/D6V0o5IXNaoi > I2LcOGWLHoiy/4VVjih+gf73v2JaY3bhac/F2mn8xlXxvtlmvagtw67YIz+mireI > HvDZK7MMzY4= > =AQ4O > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- SI Reasoning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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