OT: Siemens sees Linux desktops at 20% of market by 2008 --recommends GNOME over KDE

[George Staikos]

On Friday 15 August 2003 12:37, Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
> Some interesting quotes:
>
>    "Siemens Business Systems, the $6 billion global IT consulting
>     and outsourcing company, has conducted extensive testing with
>     real-world, non-technical workers and is declaring that Linux
>     has matured as a desktop and will quickly vault to the #2
>     most-installed OS in the world."

   What are they, fortune tellers?

>     savings going forward. McNutt says that Linux will save 20% to
>     30% in administration costs, 50% in hardware costs, and 80% in
>     licensing fees."

   I'd love to see how he came to that conclusion too.  More fortune telling?

>    "Siemens has no 'religious' attachment to a particular distro
>     or desktop environment. Before settling on Ximian, Siemens
>     evaluated plain vanilla Gnome and KDE as well. Siemens found
>     KDE to be more 'Windows-like' than Gnome, but that lead to
>     problems when non-technical users expected a more Windows-like
>     experience. Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was 'different
>     enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be
>     less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems.'"

   It sounds to me like this guy doesn't "get it".  Linux is about freedom and 
choice.  OSS is a process, not a product.  He's falling into the "Linux the 
Product" trap.  With those views, in the end someone at Seimens is going to 
be disappointed.

   They should let their users decide what they wish to use.  Furthermore, 
there is no benefit to "announcing" something like this unless they are 
trying to market one over the other.

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/