Some months there was a couple of articles (not bored enough to search slashdot’s cache) about a major announcement to be made by some hardware vendors regarding the availability of Ubuntu in August!
This was interesting news, specially concerning the $month in which it was made. Think a bit on the vicious way that the finantial markets are oriented (or exploited, should’ve been a broker) and you might find it interesting. What could be a powerful and clean way for corporations to get good financing, became something far more twisted and obscure…
But moving on… Dell has done the opposite, a few days ago they removed all the webpages from their website (at least .co.uk) promoting Ubuntu to their visitors and implemented some pages advising customers only to go Ubuntu if they are interested in open source programming. This can go two ways… but not speculating on such actions.
Now they have stopped selling pre-loaded Ubuntu machines on their websites, though they claim they will sell such machines still by phone!
I’m really wondering what’s behind such move, how it might affect Canonical and their investors as we are entering in 2011 in the one of the worst years for consumer economy in the last 20 years according to some analysts (fighting a financial crisis today will mean to have a economical crisis tomorrow).
Did something really backfired? If so why?! or eventually is Canonical trying to pull something out? Well if we take the word of their CEO, lets just wait for August and see!
Either way with a economical crisis on 2011 in the consumer markets (economical crisis != financial crisis), could this be good or bad for free software ?
nmarques 
I think the economical crisis can be a good opportunity for open source: if you want to cut costs, moving into OSS and stopping money leaking into licenses it’s the most clear path.
In the Dell case, AFAIK they’re not doing it well. Last year I’ve seen their servers raising price, and that only can mean they’re having a real bad time (what else can make the hardware price RAISE, it’s a non sense).
They’ve been cutting personal too (and my company has been suffering it, really… their sales department it’s not what it used to be), so in that context I guess they’ll try to keep things simple, and that includes removing offerings and extra efforts in the support side.
I don’t think that’s Ubuntu’s fault.
Hi,
For companaies, this are troubled times, because it’s harder to loan money from the banks. To fight the financial crisis, taxes will be raised, the public defices will be fought and in many cases, people will loose buying power. This is the origin of the economical crisis.
I don’t believe Free Software has a role to play, YET! Some days ago on Slashdot was a curious report about Microsoft complaining that they were loosing too much programmers in the high schools and universities due to open source and free software activity. And this, if correct, can be a good promise for the future to come.
12 years ago, everyone dreamed with having GNU/Linux prepared for the Desktop… Nowadays, we have powerful desktop possibilities! Yes, there is the need of some polishing… And in some cases, I hope some projects start paying more attention to the end user demands to enable Linux as a reliable solution for the Desktop.
I think that if in 10 years so much was made, within another 10 things will be different.
About the pricing strategies… Yes the price might raise without any ‘justification’. Keep in mind that from the management point of view, you can sell less and still increase your proffits, it’s doable, and it’s being done in many ways through the Industry. If the normal people and small corporations are affected by it? Sure, in many ways… but it up to us to hold the lines for as long as we can.
All the best and thanks for your comment.
nelson