Tux goes retail: How open source is faring in big box retail stores
Free open source software is making slow in-roads into the world of big box retail. This article is the first of a series of two Mad Penguin™ articles which take a detailed look inside the world of retail as Tux is experiencing it. Today, in Section One Mad Penguin™ goes shopping to see what can be seen in four retail big box stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, complete with short videos inside some of those stores for the purpose of providing a wee bit of context. Later in today's article, in Section Two, Mad Penguin™ takes a look at how software distribution works and why open Tux's move into big box retail marks a big change from its historical pattern of distribution through LUG meetings, mirrors, and Linux how-to books. Finally, in next weeks article, Mad Penguin™ interviews Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony; Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos; Mepis Linux founder Warren Woodford; and Kevin Jones, Micro Center Vice President of Merchandising, to get their take Tux's jump into big box retail.
Our investigation produced the following findings: Of the stores we visited, only Linspire Linux was sold pre-installed on computers in-store. Those FOSS boxes were often among the store's best volume sellers, primarily because they were the cheapest, according to store staff. The staff believed, based on conversations with frequent customers, that most customers were buying the boxes to install Windows on them. But that is not surprising to us, because, as we discuss in section two, brick-and-mortar "computer" stores are still part of the Microsoft distribution chain. The fact that there were some open source products at all in these stores is actually surprising, as Microsoft guards its distribution chain jealously, and punishes those business partners who stray into carrying FOSS products.
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