RE: [cobalt-users] What to do? and what I have

["Bob Noordam" <mac@xxxxxxxx>]

>
> I have the following domains...
>
> I was thinking this would be the main home
> http://www.cobaltupdates.com/
> I was thinking this could be a Bluelinq for 550 and maybe the
> XTR and QUBE3
> http://www.cobaltbluelinq.com/
> and for the user group to go with it
> http://www.cobaltuserslist.com/
> and I have a server and bandwidth ready to go with good speed....
>
> I honestly I get the feeling that if I don't build it nobody
> will.  with the
> other work I have seen over the years it will do a better job
> of removing
> the money from your pocket then giving you a good product.  I
> was planning
> on making this free but at this time I don't know...  The
> last build was
> hard on the Zeffie body... and my employee needs a good job
> he can raise a
> family on...
>

mix it.

State of the art updates, and a reliable patch service are worth money, it
is as simple as that, and anyone rolling up patches AND backing them up with
service should be charge for that service. a little like the programm you
offer here; http://www.zeffie.com/system_admin.html   but then just doing
the tasks bluelinq did.

Community work, and own-risk-as-you-go rpm's and packages can still be free,
as it is today, and as it is expected by the community.

The last part is also the main key to SUN dumping the cobalts, when
revenue's from the hardware dropped they found themselves ending up with a
userbase unwilling to pay for almost everything. SUN wasn't used to that
compared to the high end [solaris] userbase they already had. The strategic
choise was made quickly. The top people at sun have been quite honest about
that in some press releases and interviews.  In essence, it was the userbase
they wanted to get rid of, and not so much the product (altough they clearly
are uncomfortable with the open source 'problem' nabbling away at the
solaris marketshare). Anyway, the message is; you will have a hard time
getting any relevant amounts of money for 'products' unless you do some
squeezing.

2$c