[Consortium] demographics

[Daniel James]

> > 1. "Linux has to small a share of the market to
> > justify an investment."[1]

OS X isn't going to be available for the vast majority of hardware 
while Apple avoids confronting Microsoft. They are a pet competitor - 
MS even invested US$150m in Apple to keep it afloat a few years back. 
So where Intel/AMD or most embedded systems are concerned, OS X isn't 
relevant to market share. (Apple has 100% of the OS X market though!)

> > 2. "we're waiting for a DAW/Sequencer like X and then
> > we'll port."

I expect proprietary software companies are watching to see if any of 
them jump first. My own opinion is that it's a mistake waiting for 
the likes of Steinberg to port software like Cubase, because the best 
new software will probably follow a different paradigm. Stanton Final 
Scratch, for example, was nothing like existing DJ software.  

> 3. "Linux users want everything for free"

That is something I hear from people, and to a certain extent it's 
true - free beer software inevitably attracts mean users. (Warez 
attracts far more tightwad users, but that's another matter).

Those companies offering non-free-beer applications for Linux, libre 
or not, will have to consider if they are trying to sell audio 
software to existing Linux users, or Linux software to existing audio 
users. At the moment, the former market is more than catered for by 
free-beer libre software, so I'm not surprised they don't see a 
market.

I think it's probably too early to count a significant number of 
users, but the number of developers might be more important at this 
stage. Celebrity users are probably more helpful than statistics for 
advocacy purposes, especially if the numbers are small. 

I'm not convinced we can make a case based on the size of the user 
base, but let's not forget that most marketing types are constantly 
looking for 'the next big thing'. That's like to be an angle we can 
use.
 
Cheers

Daniel