[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

Sun Oct 3 07:46:57 CEST 2010

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)
+