[vox] IDC: Downturn to drive Linux adoption

[Bill Ward]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Bill Kendrick <nbs at sonic.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 03:08:23PM -0700, Bill Ward wrote:
> >
> >    You can still box and shrinkwrap open source and sell it... not
> everyone
> >    cares about the source code, and "you get what you pay for" means
> "free is
> >    junk" to a lot of people.
>
> Actually have sold Tux Paint, on CDROM, via CafePress.  I made $2/sale.
> The problem is, chucking together an ISO and mailing a disc off to them
> takes a lot of time.  By the time I get around to doing that, a new
> version of Tux Paint is out.  The CDROM they have now is seriously
> out of date... people still discover it via CafePress directly, I guess.
>
> Sad. :(


"You get what you pay for" also means "$2 is junk."  Try $19.95 and put it
up on Amazon, and I bet you'll sell a lot more.  Call it TuxPaint Pro maybe.

<snip>
> >     That is interesting... I wonder if you use "KidPix" in an ad, like
> "free
> >    alternative to KidPix" how it would do?
>
> It wouldn't fly, because of Google's rules.  I actually had one of the
> ads disabled until I removed "Mac OS X" in the description.  In other
> words, I could not say: "Works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X".


That's odd, but I guess it makes sense.


> (Presumably "Windows" didn't get flagged, because it's also a generic
> term.)
>
> So it now says something inaccurate and kind of stupid:
> "Works on all computer types".  I'm not sure Mac OS X or Linux users will
> look at that and say "HEY! That includes me!"  Plus it's also inaccurate...
> Tux Paint doesn'r un on older Mac OS 9 systems.  Etc. etc.


I think you can say "Mac" though, since I certainly see that a lot on
packaging and instructions.  Just mention in the fine print on your site
that it requires Mac OS X 10.N for whatever value of N.
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