Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2012 08:01:05 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Tony <abletony84@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD losing market share? Message-ID: <20120409080105.002d0aaf.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <CADnJ0kHsyJpsEdfTzcoUr-6z7KC7soR5ViwKb1hk4jH6PR2CoQ@mail.gmail.com> References: <CADnJ0kHsyJpsEdfTzcoUr-6z7KC7soR5ViwKb1hk4jH6PR2CoQ@mail.gmail.com>
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Tony, I'm always fascinated how people consider market share the purpose of everyone and everything. FreeBSD is not a profit-oriented company (it's not even a company in this regards), and you can hardly _measure_ its market share. Hell, you can't even measure its _usage share_! Unlike corporations with a certain income model where unit sales can be counted, you cannot count them for FreeBSD as anyone can download and install as many copies of it as he likes. Due to the licensing model, derived works that are turned into a closed-source project can even be attributed to a different company (e. g. a FreeBSD-derived OS that is installed into an embedded system acting as a firewall will sales_units++; for that company, not for FreeBSD). You have _no_, I repeat >>>NO<<< means to determine how many FreeBSD systems are currently up and running. That would be usage share. Market share is a measuring model that you can't even apply to FreeBSD in my opinion. On Sun, 8 Apr 2012 15:22:47 +0200, Tony wrote: > Imagine how FreeBSD's market share and popularity would skyrocket once > regular people gets access to it. FreeBSD has no "market share", if you apply the term correctly, as it is not part of "the market". > Low-cost hosting definitely is the way of > the future. I'm not sure it is. Even by the means of "cloud computing" prices are still rising (due to energy costs increasing), and only efficiency is a way to chance this trend. Sadly, requirements to not follow this approach, which makes things becoming more expensive in the future. "Unlimited data" is also a thing that, in my opinion, will disappear in the future. Lean and fast applications will have a renaissance. > Just look at how well low-cost > airlines<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_low-cost_airlines>are > doing. Are _currently_ doing, but they will sooner or later be out of fuel. Fuel is becoming more expensive as the available amount is limited. If you consider such things "on the long run", you will surely have to admit that a short-time strategy ("being cheap right now") does not pay. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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