RE: gEDA-user: More footprint stuff

["Robert Thorpe" <Robert.Thorpe@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Another use is this:

Imagine your company does not use Linux at all.  A vendor of proprietry
software you use is offering a Linux version of their software, and
allowing you to trial it against their Windows version.  However, they
*only* support RHEL.  To fairly test this software you either have to
buy RHEL to test it on, or use a distribution that is very similar.

(I will probably be in this situation in a few months, so it's useful to
know that such a distribution exists)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-geda-user@xxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-geda-user@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stuart Brorson
> Sent: 28 January 2005 01:27
> To: geda-user@xxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: gEDA-user: More footprint stuff
> 
> > Well there is another angle... Assume you want to deploy 50 
> machines 
> > running Synopsys VCS for example, you have now spent a lot 
> of money on 
> > VCS licenses from Synopsys and they might only support you 
> if you run 
> > a specific Linux distribution. That happens to be RHEL AS in some 
> > cases that I'm aware of.
> > 
> > You will now have spent quite a bit of money on copies of 
> RHEL for all 
> > these machines, just to be on the platform "supported" by your tool 
> > vendor. In this case a free copy of RHEL might come in 
> handy for some 
> > of those machines since it will look exactly like the supported 
> > version of RHEL. You could now just buy one copy of RHEL 
> and have 49 
> > machines running an identical "free" copy of RHEL.
> 
> I understand that's a common trick, even using RHEL.  You 
> have 50 identical machines.  The sysadmin owns one.  You buy 
> 1 copy of RHEL, and tie its support contract to the sysadmin 
> machine.  You install it on all 50 machines.  If you have a 
> problem somewhere, you just reproduce the problem on the 
> sysadmin machine and then call Red Hat.
> 
> You don't need to download an off-brand version of RHEL to do this.
> 
> The basic problem with software is explained by Capitalist Economics
> 101:  Software's marginal cost of reproduction is basically 
> nil, so in a ideally competitive market its price will tend 
> over time to zero.  Ways to get around this iron law of economics are:
> 
> *  Disrupt perfect competition, e.g. somehow become a monopoly, or
>    prevent customers from having a real choice in the market place.
> *  Keep the market in flux via research and/or constant introduction
>    of new features/products, so that prices can never asymptote all
>    the way to zero.
> *  Don't sell software.  Give it away as a loss-leader for some other
>    product which doesn't have zero cost of reproduction.
> 
> You can see all three methods at play in the real world all the time. 
> 
> Stuart
> 
> 
>