The Linux distributor begins an unusual flat-rate licensing plan which could mean cheaper PCs. But it has also quietly toned down its claims to Windows compatibility. Read the report at ZDNews.
LindowsOS Licenses Herald Cheaper PCs
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, Redhat is free and it really works
> zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, Redhat is free and it really works
Unless you want to upgrade.
Gentoo and FreeBSD are free, and you can even upgrade them easily!
While I probably will never run Lindows myself, I hope it becomes a nice alternative to running Windows.
Well, we would not know whether Lindows will work out fine or not but with a strength of some 200+ seasoned WINE programmers, Lindows might pop a mild surprise. With a non-technie CEO, quite a few have discounted Lindows for a general lack of technical directions but this guy have pumped in quite a bit of money into Lindows and I admired his courage in doing so (even it is for investment sake).
Lindows will do very well in marketing. Already this $500 flat-licensing deal speaks volume although it will be only useful to VAR and OEM guys. If Lindows become an actual product, the marketing strength of Lindows should be able to take it far.
If the only selling point for Lindows is that it will be able to run windows apps they are bound to fail. Microsoft will not wait around for those 200+ programmers to patch WINE up till it runs windows app. They will trick windows app up so they only run on a ture windows os. Takes you back to the good old days of the browser wars.
Anyway if you want to run windows stuff buy a windows os…what good is it to buy some hacked up linux with wine that will only work for a few windows apps for $99. Linux is still in dev for the desktop is just needs more time and quite a bit of tweaking and some good dev tools.
The whole licensing plans sound kinda stupid to me. their profits are based on how much OEMs are there as oppose of how much machines are out there. So, in other words, just say Dell found Lindows deal inviting, spends $500, got a few million people to use Lindows and Lindows bankrupts because they can’t pay the bandwidth bills of Click N Run.
besides, to William Ku, marketing is much more than making a product cheap. In fact undercharging for a product is bad marketing more than good marketing. Good marketing is about making a product consumers would probably want and end up needing, and making something that competitors would find hard duplicating. Charging for the product reasonably plays a important role, but it isn’t the most major part of marketing. One rule for marketers is to make a product to sell, not to sell a product you made.
You’ll find this ‘flat rate’ thing is just a gimmick to get OEMs to distribute Lindows.
If Lindows gets popular, the licensing scheme will change for future versions.
It’s much easier to make money out of a popular product than one that nobody uses.
I might be blind but what I can see around is that sales people usually sell what is being made and not the other way round like what rajan has mentioned. While I agreed completely with rajan, the reality seems to indicate otherwise; it is always an intense face-off between the sales people and the engineers; rarely would these two departments work together prefectly. If the sales are the stronger side, they would promise the customers everything including the moon and leave it to the poor engineers to clear the mess (go figure) while in the other case, the engineers would simply sneer at whatever naive sales propositions being put up.
Marketing in the raw form, is in one way or another, “deceiving” the customer that the product in hand is good enough for him or her. OK, you may have some minor adjustments here or there or a few choices but nothing else. A good example of strong marketing is Nike. Their aggressive marketing campaign revolves around top sportsmen, nothing really about the special qualities (if there is any in the first place) of their footwear.
Likewise, Red Hat(R) marketing has paid off since it is now the market leader whileas for Debian and Slackware (which are both very good distros) do not quite enjoy the same level of usage.
In any case, I was just trying to say that Lindows seems to have a strong marketing arm which I believe would help propel Lindows to the top of things. Of course, their product has to be in a state of continuous evolution but at least they would have a real shot (at goal) because of the initial efforts of their strong marketing.
Notice the example you gave, Nike, sells their wares at premium prices. Marketing is not only on how much you can sell, how good is your product. It is about how well the company stays afloat with the amount you sell at the price you set. And Lindows pricing is awfully low for profit, unless they are limiting this packages to very small OEMs, and not to medium size regional companies.
As for their products, except of forcing users to use root, I don’t see anything it has that its competitors don’t. Let’s see, Windows applications compatiblity: counting from reviews, you are better off spending your money on WineX because it doesn’t run that many apps that Wine can’t. Then Click n Run… Lycoris has IRIS. Red Hat uses Ximian Red Carpet. In fact, Click n Run isn’t the first person to think of such a concept. And as of now, Lindows customers would be extremely disappointed with the company’s Click n Run thingy because it promises something like Office when in reality it is GPLed half-baked GPLed applications (KOffice, as much as I hate to admit it, its the truth).
And with any good marketing team there must be a good PR team. And Lindows PR is nothing but good for the past few months. Firstly, they dealt badly with the Linux community by not releasing the GPLed code of the product claiming the product isn’t released and the beta testers are considered employees, not customers (In that case too, they have a bad HR department too, LOL). Then they had a blow with WINE by the broken marriage with Code Weavers apparently caused because Lindows refused to release any more code to the WINE community (and which is a major cause WINE relicensing to LGPL). Then now with the non-Linux press in apparently taking back claims to run majority of Windows applications and pushing all the focus on the Click n Run technology.
So, in other words, if you are planning to invest in any company, Lindows.com would be a bad idea.