FreeBSD losing market share?

Da Rock freebsd-questions at herveybayaustralia.com.au
Mon Apr 9 07:08:58 UTC 2012


On 04/09/12 16:01, Polytropon wrote:
> Tony, I'm always fascinated how people consider market share the
> purpose of everyone and everything. FreeBSD is not a profit-oriented
> company (it's not even a company in this regards), and you can
> hardly _measure_ its market share. Hell, you can't even measure
> its _usage share_! Unlike corporations with a certain income model
> where unit sales can be counted, you cannot count them for FreeBSD
> as anyone can download and install as many copies of it as he
> likes. Due to the licensing model, derived works that are turned
> into a closed-source project can even be attributed to a different
> company (e. g. a FreeBSD-derived OS that is installed into an
> embedded system acting as a firewall will sales_units++; for that
> company, not for FreeBSD). You have _no_, I repeat>>>NO<<<  means
> to determine how many FreeBSD systems are currently up and running.
> That would be usage share. Market share is a measuring model that
> you can't even apply to FreeBSD in my opinion.
>
>
>
> On Sun, 8 Apr 2012 15:22:47 +0200, Tony wrote:
>> Imagine how FreeBSD's market share and popularity would skyrocket once
>> regular people gets access to it.
> FreeBSD has no "market share", if you apply the term correctly,
> as it is not part of "the market".
And regular people already can access it. They can use it freely as much 
as they like and get free help to boot (though I hope they reciprocate 
in kind in some way). Unlike certain OS you have to actually pay for to 
use and pay to get help, such as a certain popular OS which supposedly 
has 90% market share and gives all a headache... ;)

Community is a so much nicer term for this phenomena.
>
>
>> Low-cost hosting definitely is the way of
>> the future.
> I'm not sure it is. Even by the means of "cloud computing" prices
> are still rising (due to energy costs increasing), and only efficiency
> is a way to chance this trend. Sadly, requirements to not follow this
> approach, which makes things becoming more expensive in the future.
> "Unlimited data" is also a thing that, in my opinion, will disappear
> in the future. Lean and fast applications will have a renaissance.
>
>
>
>> Just look at how well low-cost
>> airlines<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_low-cost_airlines>are
>> doing.
> Are _currently_ doing, but they will sooner or later be out of fuel.
> Fuel is becoming more expensive as the available amount is limited.
> If you consider such things "on the long run", you will surely have
> to admit that a short-time strategy ("being cheap right now") does
> not pay.
>
>
>
>



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