On 31/12/06, Mrugesh Karnik mrugeshkarnik@gmail.com wrote:
We can rid you of viruses, spyware, reinstallations, blue screens, pirated software and crashes at nil or minimum cost.
very good one. or as I said before, "gnulinux is virus free, stable, robust and most importantly cost effective." or "virus free, stable and powerful system with no license charge. only pay for services not for your license rights".
Make sure you know the target audience. People you're targetting don't care about freedom. Teach them freedom once they've adapted to your software.
very true mrujesh. this is what I was refering to when I spoke about striking a balance between the cost issue and the freedom issue. remember that people will always ask you "if the software is free, why do people charge for installation etc?" and "if it is so high quality how it is free? there is some secret hidden!" believe it or not this is what we all will face. and we better be prepared to answer it (which I believe we are)
Quality software and not free software is what will convert Windows "Users".
exactly right mrujesh. if I was the director of KBC, I would give you maximum for this. see, firstly people care a dam for license because laws in India are not strict. secondly that same paradox comes to my mind time and time again. if this is what windows gives us then why is linux given to us free? this is the place where high quality comes in. may be linux installation costs you about 1000 for example. firstly in that 1000 you get every thing and secondly you hardly need any maintainance services if any. I think quality and security issues will naturally spread fud against windows which is really needed to convert users. I think 40% stress must be on cost effectiveness and the rest 60% on quality quality and only quality. in that too I feel security must come on the topline and then the wide amount of packages next on the list. some times or rather most of the times these packages are much much better in quality than the ones available on windows. again as mrujesh said quality! and most importantly, be flexible. at times we will need to talk mostly about cost effectiveness specially in cases of NGOs and schools for poor children. in such cases cost becomes major issue. so we need to well balance the document. just go back a few emails where I have given my guidelines. as a former reporter of Indian Express and Mid-day, I am giving my views which can help make the brochure totally questionless.
We are not talking about CS students who want to dig up the source code.
right. and although we do, just tell me how many out of them would actually have the time, gutts and willingness to do it? so we should put the open source and free license issue in this way. "if development cost is to be recovered for a particular software, distribute the cost over the willing customers. since the license is free for any one, all contributores or even non-contributers are leagul customers of the software."
regards. Krishnakant.