🚀 go-pugleaf

My personal opinions, for what the're worth (which isn't much).

You can't make money selling support. Red Hat is the largest Linux
distributor and they have yet to make a profit. If you can show me a company
with over $2 million in sales that is profitable selling support for open
source software I would love to get a copy of their 10K and take a look.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever purchased a support contract for an
open source product? I ask because I have yet to talk to anyone who says
that Borland should make money selling support who has actually purchased a
support contract for any open source product. I admit that I have only
talked to a few people so the 100% "no" response may not be statistically
significant but it certainly is interesting<g>.

Borland's plan to spin off Interbase, take it public and make a killing may
have been a good idea but the timing did not work out. Those things happen
in the high-tech investment world from time to time.

Interbase was a profitable product before all of this started. The people
that made it profitable were the IB VARS and corporate accounts. They won't
use an open source product, for obvious reasons, so if IB is going to
survive Borland has to get back to a model that allows them to sell
something to that portion of the market that has proven it is willing to pay
for it.

If IB were your business and you had a choice between satisfying the needs
of those that have proven they are willing to pay you and satisfying the
needs of those who are not which choice would you make?

Forgetting about what has been done with IB in the past for a moment and
considering that Borland management is required by law to do what is in the
best financial interest of the stockholders, what would you do differently
at this point in time?

Whether you like what Borland is doing or not, I can't think of any other
course of action that makes more business sense.

--
Bill