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
sherlock@vsnl.com wrote:
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.
You have again missed the basics and the point. We talk of piracy. And we talk of helping a cyber cafe owner switch to linux. To make him switch you talk of cost of MS software. But he is getting the software free due to piracy. What alternate is there ? The bank HAS to buy the software and pay so he will be willing to switch to linux to save cost. The cyber cafe has no such compulsion because for him paying the hafta is a cheaper way out. He cannot pay for the software he needs because it will take his cost up which he cannot afford. How many people will go to a cyber cafe charging Rs. 50 per hour because it uses legal software when the guy next door is charging Rs. 20 per hour ? So, the comparison which you are making and which is the basis we all try to use to convince the client to switch to Linux (ie, price benefit) does not apply to him. That is the difference between Banks (or large corporates) and CyberCafe Owners.
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.
You walk out. That is fine. But that negates what you started with. You want to make him use Linux so that the community and users grow (and may be earn a little support / consulting revenue). When you walk out, that opportunity is gone. He will compare and see, he is not paying for MS software anyway, his clients do not want linux, so forget the whole thing.
Think commercials. Nothing else will work. All other approaches will only result in people wasting their valuable tme which can be put to better use.
Regards saswata
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Saswata Banerjee & Associates -
sherlock＠vsnl.com