Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 21:12:51 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>, "Phil Regnauld" <regnauld@ftf.net> Cc: <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: FreeBSD market share statistics Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990908210530.04640c50@localhost> In-Reply-To: <000e01befa2a$a2d34dc0$021d85d1@youwant.to> References: <19990908114806.04124@ns.int.ftf.net>
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At 11:47 AM 9/8/99 -0700, David Schwartz wrote: > It takes a certain amount of effort to make a native FreeBSD build. The >potential revenue from that effort is weighed against the potential revenue >of everything else that could be done with that same amount of effort. > > The software industry is a very strange one. In pretty much every other >industry, the question is "will I make more money on this thing than it >costs me to make it?" However, due to the shortage of talented programmers, >in this industry the question is more often, "is this the most effective >usage of my limited programming resources?". > > This is a question that relies completely on relative numbers. FreeBSD's >market is considered relative to every other market. Not in absolute >dollars. > > DS Absolutely correct. As long as talented programmers are rare and subject to burnout, and financial rewards tend to be reserved for managers rather than programmers, coders WILL be a scarce resource. There's also the matter of support. You need at least one support person ON EACH SHIFT to support a new platform; this typically means hiring and training more people. And then there's the problem of more SKUs. With limited shelf space, and the common practice of taxing unsold inventory, stores will only carry so much stock. If you publish your product for 5 platforms, CompUSA will sell the one or two most popular. FreeBSD isn't #1 or #2, so it's available "by special order" (read: slower than getting it via the Internet and more expensive, too). If at all. To really surmount these problems, an OS must climb to no less than the #3 or #4 spot; preferably higher. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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