NO DESKTOP, PAY FOR UNITY (business model)

[Xen]

Jesse Steele schreef op 23-10-2017 12:00:

> GET OUT OF DESKTOP. Stop dividing developer attention.

Unity was great for netbooks and small screen (or small resolution) 
computers.

> "Ubuntu" proper should ONLY be "server". Don't pick winners.

> Dear Mark Shuttleworth, your awesomeness is in "servers", which I use.

Personally I don't see what makes Ubuntu excessively more special on 
servers than other distros.

I think that if Ubuntu is only the server many people will move back to 
Debian.

The whole selling point of Ubuntu has always been more attention to the 
desktop than Debian.

More polish.

> focus on servers only

I really don't see the point. Welcome back, Debian.

> We need your vision, but your power only seems to be on the command 
> line.

Ubuntu has for years been the distro that novices turned to.

> It failed because you served caviar in a free soup kitchen.

It's true that people will pay money for unity.

> kill those "can't catch me" notifications

Not sure what that is.

> auto-hide those hideous icons on the left

Auto-hiding is generally considered a bad user interface choice.

> and charge $10/year for users to install it via ubuntu.com

Software as a service is not a good idea at all.

At most you can charge for the initial purchase and then later for 
updates.

But really people will dig an initial purchase price much more.

Even if it is $5 (or €5) it will give a boost to Unity's quality.

If it's really good you can charge more but currently I would say $5 is 
what everyone will easily want to pay.

No one is going to hold back on an earlier free version in order to not 
pay $5.

You could voluntarily ask people to renew a license each year for the 
same amount (or more even) to cover the costs of upgrades and security 
updates.

You could actually ask more for renewal (say $10) than for the initial 
purchase.

I think you can make this a voluntary "donation" (license).

So the first part is not voluntary, the later parts are.

You could even up it even more in later years. Is that such a weird 
idea?

A long-time user with the same install, for instance, will value the 
installation more as years go by.

So make it $10 for the 2nd year of renewal but $15 for the 3rd, that you 
request for people, and $15 for the fourth also.

This way long term users "benefit more".

That will in turn give the team a reason to keep older distros (and 
installations) running smoothly.

A cherished thing.

You know how those ads for rebates "only for new customers" piss people 
off right.

Well, let's use the reverse.

Older distros are often less buggy too.

This will also slow down the race for more, better, more important, more 
important.

And entice people to invest in existing software instead of constantly 
bringing out new and crappy stuff.

So: money to the old software.

Don't lose your legacy please.

(Dracut is another one of those Red Hat things that won't make things 
better, for instance.... and you can soon call it "Red Hat Ubuntu" or 
"Ubuntu Red Hat".)

I don't want to use Red Hat, I want to use Ubuntu.

So what to do on upgrades? Makes upgrades free. They are part of the 
same license in that sense.

So what if someone reinstalls a new copy? Pay the $5.

Reinstall same version? Use same license.

People who have upgraded several times? Doesn't fit in well with the 
"more money as time goes by"

but that's mostly because upgrades are risky.

So you could say that upgrading reduces the "voluntary license" back to 
$5.

All of this to favour loyal users, and stable systems.