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Companies like Red Hat and Novell base a lot of their Linux business model on providing support to their big enterprise customers. This model has been very successful, but no one has applied this, or any other, business model to consumer desktop Linux with great success.
Why not just scale that model down and allow consumers to buy support? Naturally, many companies offer support for their desktop Linux, so shouldn’t this idea of scaling have been tested? Not necessarily.
Canonical sells support for the desktop version of Ubuntu for a minimum of $250 per year. In other words, some random Ubuntu user is not likely to be buying support. What if it just cost $15, though?
At $15 dollars, the margins are not exactly going to be large, but it might work anyway. For example, this year I gave a family an old computer with Ubuntu installed as part of a project. In this process, I sent an email to Canonical asking if they could donate a few months of support. The answer was, obviously, no. If the price was only $15 per person, though, it would be quite reasonable to give this family a year of support with a phone number they could call.
I’m not entirely convinced there is a big enough market, but inexpensive, consumer-aimed support is an interesting idea. Have you ever hared of anyone trying this before?
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Rene, I think that sounds like the best idea.
Apple sells “extended warranties” with their computers, and provide an excellent service for something like 3 years – a toll-free phone number for support from anywhere in the world, and knowledgeable people on the other end. The cost is one-off when you buy your computer, a few hundred dollars depending on your currency.
This works great for their business model, and may work with preinstalled Ubuntu. But it won’t work for the average joe who installed Ubuntu on their own computer, as they probably will not be willing to sign up for such an expensive deal when trying out ubuntu.
But a per-event fee would work for anyone. For even greater simplicity, it could be a premium telephone number where you just pay per minute on your phone bill (an 0900 number in NZ).
I have thought about this idea for years, but assumed whoever did Canonical’s budgeting had already brushed it asside. The problem is, consumers typically do not buy support, or only think to buy it when they realy need it. A $15/yr consumer option would wreak havoc with the corporate model, and not necessarily pay off.
On the other hand, if Canonical charged $15 per year, OR ~$5-10 per support call for non-subscribing customers, the model might make more sense. It would encourage people to subscribe, and still make revenue even if people didn’t subscribe, but just called in with periodic little questions. As Ubuntu’s user base expands (already several million) this may be a more profitable model than their current corporate model.
No Kidding! Back when I was a linux noob in the mid to late 90’s, I purchased a copy of redhat, and then a copy of suse for around $60 each. Both came with support, I forget how long, 90 days to 180 days or something like that. Anyway… I got a nice retail package, and with suse a nice big BOOK to go with it, and 3-6 months of support over the phone for a decent price. If Ubuntu would offer a monthly rate, or a cheaper yearly rate, that would be great. They’re the only distro I know of that will mail you a CD with the OS on it. Other sites want you to pay $1.99 or something at least for shipping. The desktop user is not going to pay $250 for support for a year for a free OS. Maybe this is an area for someone to start a business. Start offering Linux support, or even just Ubuntu support to customers for an annual fee, or varying levels of support, email only, 1 call per month included, or just a per call fee, $1.99 a minute type thing.
Have I: No
Should I’ve: Yes.
How about a “per-event fee we solve your problem or we don’t take your money approach” or something like that?
I find that e-mail support business extremely bogus and it sounds like a PITA for everyone involved.