Decades ago before any of this happened I saw it on some PBS show on TV. A man being interviewed said that vendors would offer the hardware for (nearly?) free expecting to make it up selling software.
SONY PS2 is the classic case. SONY PS2 had a very powerful GPU which could be used in clusters to build supercomputers. SONY sold the PS2 at a fraction of what it cost them because they expected to recoup by selling games. They did not anticipate very large numbers of PS2s being purchased to run Linux in clusters. The losses were so bad they tried to renege on letting PS2 run Linux by putting out a software update the turned off the ability. I could see not offering new PS2s with the Linux option but do you really think that you could turn a datacenter cluster into kids buying games by shutting off the Linux option? Did they really think they could undo the lost game sales that way?
Fast-forward and Microsoft is trying to avoid the hole in the "free hardware recouped by paid software" business model by restricting the hardware to just their software in the case of their ARM tablets the where the "secure" boot can't be turned off.
The business model works because people will sell their freedom for $10 discount on a tablet especially when most of them don't understand what they are doing.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at nvidia. Ex-biologist. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon and Bluesky.
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The Business Model Drives The Complex
Date: 2013-01-09 01:40 pm (UTC)SONY PS2 is the classic case. SONY PS2 had a very powerful GPU which could be used in clusters to build supercomputers. SONY sold the PS2 at a fraction of what it cost them because they expected to recoup by selling games. They did not anticipate very large numbers of PS2s being purchased to run Linux in clusters. The losses were so bad they tried to renege on letting PS2 run Linux by putting out a software update the turned off the ability. I could see not offering new PS2s with the Linux option but do you really think that you could turn a datacenter cluster into kids buying games by shutting off the Linux option? Did they really think they could undo the lost game sales that way?
Fast-forward and Microsoft is trying to avoid the hole in the "free hardware recouped by paid software" business model by restricting the hardware to just their software in the case of their ARM tablets the where the "secure" boot can't be turned off.
The business model works because people will sell their freedom for $10 discount on a tablet especially when most of them don't understand what they are doing.