[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[andré]

Marc Paré a écrit :
>
> 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
Targeting the school boards makes a lot of sense.
Note that Openoffice targeted various gov't organisations in France, 
some of which ended up migrating to Mandriva as well.  Maybe that could 
work with school boards as well.  I'm tempted to try something like that 
with mine, in banlieue of Montréal.
Just out of curiosity, what is your school board ?

For the server, if Mandriva management were a little more reasonable, it 
would be good to partner with them.  (I'd like to see something like 
RedHat/Fedora.)
In any case, you can't go wrong with RedHat.

André (andre999)