On Wednesday 05 January 2005 09:46, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:

sherlock@vsnl.com wrote:

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On Saturday 01 January 2005 10:51, Saswata Banerjee wrote:

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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

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 ?

I did not miss the point at all. If u accept that cafewalla's pirated software cost is zero and let him get away with that, then the only cost left is the downtime due to viruses and security issues. Security is not exactly a priority for cybercafes. So the service guy comes in at off peak hrs. (not sure if there is such a thing tho) and formats and reinstalls stuff on lets say 2 pcs - that's 1.5 hrs. And he does this on a regular basis. So a linux guy will now have to charge less than this. I am quite sure that the Linux guy has opportunity to make a lot more money than this. So the economics of ignoring piracy is a very bad thing for GNU/Linux

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.

I assure you hafta has great buoyancy and rises faster than a rocket. So it is a good (yeah the sickness is getting to me) thing.

He cannot pay for the software he needs ?? because it will take his cost up which he cannot afford. H

But u r offering him a very affordable alternative. Only thing is his customer does not care and neither does he since gyping billy boy is not in his equation. Security, reliability etc work when the owner is the enduser. This is true even for banks and other organisations. Go to the It dept. and they will give u a trillion reasons for the status quo. Go to the end user and things change dramatically. However even this has changed to point where the generalisation is not true.

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.

Exactly. The cyber cafe seems to me a waste of time as a commercial propostion unless someone is willing to work at slave labour rates. Or add the cyber cafe revenue as opportunity bonus to an existing linux service catering to more up market clients by using the cybercafe as a training ground. The advocacy for cafewalas thingy by the lugs does not gel. It will be better addressed by (????????????????)