On Saturday 01 January 2005 10:51, Saswata Banerjee wrote:
you seem to have lost the context here. Manoj is not talking of large businesses but small players without tech skill. Pricing is decided by competition and you do not have luxary of adding up all costs. The cost has to be minimise.
U are trying to compete with robbery. where does the question of size come into this. If the cafewalla (or a bank) could get away with it he would chain u to his office and make u work for free as his serf. The point here is that if someone decides that the risk in doing something illegal / immoral / unethical is low enough they will do it. So beat him with the legal stick. When that hurts he will look at alternates. Now GNU & friends can compete. This is exactly the position that M$ (and many other businesses) is in - working a broken system by shifting costs to the rest of society. This also (IMHO) is the difference between opensource and free software. Opensource more or less accepts the current broken state of affairs in society.GNU realises that the system is broken and needs to be fixed. Practical issues come later fixing the system comes first.
Nor does it make sense to tell them that they cannot do business without skills. They are doing it and making adequate profits.
U dont. U walk away and let the havaldar do his bit. The bottomline will correct itself and if the guy can add he will compare your quote with M$ and figure it out.
rgds jtd