[TriLUG] Profit margins on box sets

rpjday rpjday at mindspring.com
Thu Oct 25 06:14:07 EDT 2001


On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Fred Stutzman wrote:

> This discussion has got me thinking - how much money does a company like
> RedHat make off these box sets?  I can imagine after they box, bind, and
> distribute everything to these major chains, and they add their markup,
> the profit can't be *that* substatial.  I'm torn - I want to support
> Linux, but is the limited amount of monetary compensation they take from
> the purchase of a box set worth it?  Everyone has different reasons for
> buying box sets - that would be mine.  If anyone has hard facts or
> theories, I'd be interested.

i recall this discussion from at least a year ago.  from memory,
red hat gets about half of the shelf price.  so, yes, they still get
something significant, but if we *really* wanted to support them,
i guess the ticket would be to buy from them directly, so they get
to keep *all* the profit.

of course, a totally crazy idea would be to just copy red hat releases
from friends and then, out of the goodness of your heart, send them
$20 or something.  red hat as shareware.  isn't *that* an intriguing
business model?

rday

-- 
Robert P. J. Day
Eno River Technologies, Durham NC
Unix, Linux and Open Source training


Microsoft:  Committed to putting the "backward" into "backward compatibility."




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