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Re: Big Profits from Free Software

  • Subject: Re: Big Profits from Free Software
  • From: BearItAll <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2006 15:01:45 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • References: <20222629.dOvfBb0fC2@schestowitz.com> <1152047415.353703.6440@a14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <44ab7d3e$0$3531$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net> <ijpsn3-uhf.ln1@sirius.tg00suus7038.net>
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  • Xref: news.mcc.ac.uk comp.os.linux.advocacy:1125778
The Ghost In The Machine wrote:

> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Phil Da Lick!
> <phil_the_lick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>  wrote
> on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 10:00:29 +0100
> <44ab7d3e$0$3531$ed2619ec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> Mike Conners wrote:
>>> Profit of 14 million on revenues of 30 million. BAAAWWWAAAHHHHH. This
>>> must be some sort of lintard joke or somethin. Microsoft does 30
>>> million in revenue every 15 minutes and Microsoft makes 14 million of
>>> profit every few hours.
>>
>> And why precisely are you so excited about that?
> 
> David vs. Goliath.  In the Bible, David wins.  In the
> physical world, I'm not so sure the smaller guy will be
> guaranteed to.
> 

Doesn't matter how big you are, in school fights the little chunky bloke
always won. Well known fact. When someone says 'You can beat him, he's only
five foot two' always ask if that is measured vertically or across the
shoulders.


> $30B is a *lot* of profit that could be applied to
> marketing budget.  It could, for example, buy everyone in
> the USA a sandwich and drink.  (It probably could do more,
> depending on locale.  It's $10/person.)
> 

Gads I wouldn't like to take that order to McDonalds, '3 billion big macs
please, 200 million without mayo, 40 million without cheese. Do I get a toy
with that?'.

> Redhat's *revenue* ($301.55M) is barely 1/10th of that,
> and RedHat's net income is only $81M.  That translates
> into $0.27 per person.  Nowadays, that's barely enough
> for a gumball.
> 
> Still, it's more than it was; RedHat stock in Jan 2001
> was at $9.34.  It took a bad dip next month but is now
> at $23.20.
> 
> Nice return, that. :-)  Microsoft's stock during the same
> period was essentially flat as a pancake.
> 
> The 1y and 2y results are, admittedly, more mixed, but from
> a stock price standpoint, Microsoft is extremely boring.
> This might be a good thing to certain individuals, but
> it's clear that RedHat has a bit more going for it.
> 

Its simply RH's greater growth potential and the likelyhood that it will
carry on. 

MS's server growth just isn't going to happen, they tried but it just
doesn't cut it, definately not in the high end stuff, but even as a diddy
office server it's more trouble than it's worth.

So the UNIX market is definately up for grabs by the best of Linux and RH is
that. Ok so there are others that may be said to be as good, Suse
enterprise etc, but when you have had a faultless RH running for many
years, it's hard to turn your main live servers over to anyone else,
mirrors yes even the off site mirror, but the live servers, no.

So unless RH do another 'gotcha' over the licences where many of us were
rippied off with licences suddenly ceasing to exist, with no recompence for
the time we lost, in my company I lost close to a year (quite a few years
ago now) so had to buy the same license again. As long as they don't do
something that stupid again I can't really see anyone already using RH
dropping them (unless its just for fun of cause).


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