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I don’t understand why people keep claiming that the advantages of these clones (expanding the ecosystem) outweigh the disadvantages (lost revenue) to Red Hat.

I don’t understand why people keep claiming that the advantages of these clones (expanding the ecosystem) outweigh the disadvantages (lost revenue) to Red Hat. Surely, RH have access to far better statistics on this issue than we do, and they have obviously concluded that this is not the case.

tm-guimaraes 3y ago
First, There will never be data for everything. Nor is data analysis without errors. Second, lost revenue implies they would actually be able to make money from such things, piracy studies imply otherwise, and so does my personal experience. Revenue is not theirs to be lost. It’s a bullshit argument. Third: Conclusions from leadership are blinded by pressure and greed, so it’s easy to parrot BS like “lost revenue”. Harder to double down on things like “customer focus” whose impacts is harder to measure. And redhat was always known for costumer focus, the free software provides huge insurance to their customers. And they are throwing that all away for “lost revenue” There’s no such thing as “lost revenue”. Ok, maybe if some natural disaster took away your goods that were already ordered.
- bimblesticks 3y ago
  1. Of course there is no such thing as flawless data analysis, but they have data and people hired to analyse it and we… don’t. 2. RH makes their money of off companies that pay for support. Do you think that if a company can’t use CentOS they’re going to pirate RHEL? Really? 3. Conclusions from leadership are never perfect, but that does not mean the default conclusion should be that they are awful. RH seems to be doing pretty well at the moment. Opportunity cost is a central concept in economics. When deciding between decisions A and B, companies will consider the revenue they would gain from either decision. If companies accept the revenue from decision A, they are doing it at the cost of the revenue they would have made from decision B. This is what I mean by “lost revenue”. By choosing to shut down git.centos.org, RH loses the revenue they would have gotten from keeping the repository open and gains the revenue they believe they will get from shutting it down. My apologies if this sounds condescending, but you keep insisting that there’s no such thing as “lost revenue” and I genuinely don’t know how to respond to that without just explaining opportunity cost.
josephcsible 3y ago
> Surely, RH have access to far better statistics on this issue than we do, and they have obviously concluded that this is not the case. Companies get things wrong and make bad decisions all the time.

tm-guimaraes 3y ago

First, There will never be data for everything. Nor is data analysis without errors. Second, lost revenue implies they would actually be able to make money from such things, piracy studies imply otherwise, and so does my personal experience. Revenue is not theirs to be lost. It’s a bullshit argument. Third: Conclusions from leadership are blinded by pressure and greed, so it’s easy to parrot BS like “lost revenue”. Harder to double down on things like “customer focus” whose impacts is harder to measure. And redhat was always known for costumer focus, the free software provides huge insurance to their customers. And they are throwing that all away for “lost revenue” There’s no such thing as “lost revenue”. Ok, maybe if some natural disaster took away your goods that were already ordered.

bimblesticks 3y ago
1. Of course there is no such thing as flawless data analysis, but they have data and people hired to analyse it and we… don’t. 2. RH makes their money of off companies that pay for support. Do you think that if a company can’t use CentOS they’re going to pirate RHEL? Really? 3. Conclusions from leadership are never perfect, but that does not mean the default conclusion should be that they are awful. RH seems to be doing pretty well at the moment. Opportunity cost is a central concept in economics. When deciding between decisions A and B, companies will consider the revenue they would gain from either decision. If companies accept the revenue from decision A, they are doing it at the cost of the revenue they would have made from decision B. This is what I mean by “lost revenue”. By choosing to shut down git.centos.org, RH loses the revenue they would have gotten from keeping the repository open and gains the revenue they believe they will get from shutting it down. My apologies if this sounds condescending, but you keep insisting that there’s no such thing as “lost revenue” and I genuinely don’t know how to respond to that without just explaining opportunity cost.

josephcsible 3y ago

> Surely, RH have access to far better statistics on this issue than we do, and they have obviously concluded that this is not the case. Companies get things wrong and make bad decisions all the time.