[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

Marc Paré marc at marcpare.com
Fri Oct 1 12:18:53 CEST 2010


Le 2010-10-01 05:56, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
> 2010/10/1 Marc Paré<marc at marcpare.com>:
>>> Such applications don't have to be installed by default. They just have
>>> to be available on the installation DVD, with a selectable Educational
>>> group of applications, much like the Internet and Server groups
>>> available on existing Mandriva DVD's. It could even be called "Young
>>> Family".
>>>
>>> Note that in the past (at least about 10 years ago), RedHat CD's had
>>> many selectable installation groups, many of which overlapped. So using
>>> this approach, there could be groups called "Educational", "Young
>>> Family", and "Home Office", for example, all containing the
>>> go-openoffice office suite, among other applications.
>>> I believe that the current Mandriva DVD doesn't have any overlap between
>>> installation groups.
>>>
>>
>>> - André (andre999)
>>>
>>
>> I like this approach.
>
> Same here. When I used SuSE Linux 4.4.1 they had the same approach. I
> even did several installations, each with a different set of
> applications, using the same /home. A good way to find out what you
> really want/need.
>
> Marc, what you wrote about kids being the future is common knowledge,
> I wonder that so many companies do not recognize that. Microsoft does,
> they are sponsoring school computer networks and internet access, thus
> creating their future client base.
>
> wobo
>

Suse Linux really lost momentum when Novell didn't/has not recognized 
that its netware application days are at an end. If they pushed for a 
Suse educational netware application/distro, most school boards using 
the Novel netware apps would migrate this way. Fewer disruptions to 
their systems. School boards plan 5-10 years in advance for changes and 
it is extremely difficult for them to change in the middle of planned 
migration. There is a lot of money involved in this. Most board will pay 
Microsoft approx. $30-50/seat for use of MSWord -- so for example our 
board has over 10,000 computers. That is a huge cost just for the use of 
a Wordprocessor. I don't know the cost of the Novell install/contract 
but it would most likely approach this amount.

If Mageia had educational partners on-board it would be a huge initial 
plus to the distro. School boards are, in a traditional sense, expected 
to spend money and not save/make money. We could, for example, offer to 
tailor certain aspects of the distro for our education partners. Note 
that the focus on educational institutions is for foster use of 
knowledge, so they would most likely be interested in areas of a distro 
that focussed on kids/adult learning needs. If Mageia did this well, 
then this could then lead to more educational partners coming on board. 
We would only need 2-5 educational partners to kick-start this approach. 
I would suggest to try for 1 educational partner per continent. It would 
then mushroom from there.

Unfortunately, not having a Mageia server service may hurt us. But there 
is nothing to stop us from partnering or tooling up our community distro 
to work well with a server (in this case I would go for RedHat servers).

There is no doubt that the next major expenses in the very near future 
for school boards is the change in netware applications. And they are 
still very confused. What they do know is that it will most likely be a 
linux solution. That is pretty well accepted.

Marc



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