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I think that's an over-simplistic way to look at it. Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader If anything loss

I think that's an over-simplistic way to look at it. Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader If anything loss leaders are more important for platforms, since learning a platform is a big time investment and people will reach for what they know when the time comes to choose something. I can't claim to know if this was the right economic decision for Canonical because it's a very complicated question, but what I can say with certainty is they just gave 900,000+ people a reason not to use their platform, along with sending a strong signal to a lot of observers that might be thinking about investing time in their platform. Is the engineering time they save going to gain them something that makes them attractive to 900,000 new users? That's a lot of people to appeal to.

pjmlp 7y ago
Canonical already gave up the desktop long time ago, following up Red-Hat footsteps, because those loss leaders were dragging the company down into insolvency.
- overgard 7y ago
  Considering that they’re shipping a lot of desktop improvements in 19, that seems objectively untrue.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Not searching for it now, but they definitely made public statements in that regard, including an interview with management. So those improvements are just a nice to have thing, unless they changed direction.
username444 7y ago
I'd say it's a stronger signal that they're a smart company that knows when to say enough is enough. 900,000 is objectively a large number of users, but if those engineering resources are better put to use service the larger customer base, it's simple a good business decision. I get pissed every time a service drops support for something I haven't updated in 5 years, but as a business owner, I also actively discontinue services that cause more headache than revenue. It's simply specialization.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Valve still need an effective hedge against Microsoft and Apple walling off their desktop/laptop platform in the same way virtually every platform is presently walled off. Convincing someone else, like valve to do some or all of the work would have avoided the negative PR that Canonical ate.

pjmlp 7y ago

Canonical already gave up the desktop long time ago, following up Red-Hat footsteps, because those loss leaders were dragging the company down into insolvency.

overgard 7y ago
Considering that they’re shipping a lot of desktop improvements in 19, that seems objectively untrue.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Not searching for it now, but they definitely made public statements in that regard, including an interview with management. So those improvements are just a nice to have thing, unless they changed direction.

username444 7y ago

I'd say it's a stronger signal that they're a smart company that knows when to say enough is enough. 900,000 is objectively a large number of users, but if those engineering resources are better put to use service the larger customer base, it's simple a good business decision. I get pissed every time a service drops support for something I haven't updated in 5 years, but as a business owner, I also actively discontinue services that cause more headache than revenue. It's simply specialization.

michaelmrose 7y ago
Valve still need an effective hedge against Microsoft and Apple walling off their desktop/laptop platform in the same way virtually every platform is presently walled off. Convincing someone else, like valve to do some or all of the work would have avoided the negative PR that Canonical ate.