As I read it you only repeat your theoretical argument as to why Novell’s Linux businnes SHOULDN’T have grown.

Where is anything new, where are sources that support you claim?

@Harsh Chaudhry: the Slashdot story is here:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/27/1239251

In my opinion, Roy and Duncan are using numbers in a dishonest way to support their anti-Novell bias. My grandmother used to say, “Figures never lie. But liars often figure.”

In Duncan’s post he attempts to debunk my debunking by pointing out that my calculations are linear while the percentage increases are non-linear. He has a point, but it does not validate Roy’s original hypothesis (which, by the way, is also linear.)

Here’s the original hypothesis.
Base facts
Q1 2006 – Q1 2007 saw 659% growth.
Q2 2006 – Q2 2007 saw 114% growth.
Q3 2006 – Q3 2007 saw 95% growth.
Extrapolation
Decline in growth will continue at the current rate, therefore…
Q4 2006 – Q4 2007 will see ~ 0% growth.
Q1 2007 – A1 2008 will see ~ -100% growth.

Looks very logical, doesn’t it? But it’s FUD.

The first problem with these numbers is, as I pointed out in my first post, each percentage of growth number has a different base from which to begin. If you have one customer, 600% growth is relatively easy to achieve and not very impressive. (Wow! A whole six customer increase!) However, if you have 100,000 customers then 100% growth is quite impressive indeed. So, without the actual base figures, the percentages mean nothing.

In order to do a true trend analysis, you would have to have the actual growth figures, not percentages.

Mind you, I am no defender of the MS/Novell deal. Frankly, I couldn’t care less if Roy and Duncan want to criticize them for making the deal. However, when they start manipulating numbers to manufacture FUD just to make their point… well, then I have a problem with it.

There is nothing on this site that is not anti-Linux FUD. Microsoft only wishes someone actually cared about this site.

If your salary increased by 95% last year, you would not say you took a pay cut because it tripled the previous year. If he wants to make a point, he should show factually that without the boost of the Microsoft coupons, Novell would have *less* Linux revenue than it has now.

That would be a lot more enlightening than speculation about trends in growth rates being interpolated into the future. The average temperature climbs about 40 degrees here from January to July. Therefore by December the average temperature should surely be 125 degrees.

In calculus terms, he’s confusing his derivatives.

I am an impartial bystander. Could you please explan why you think that Duncan’s logic is flawed. It makes sense to me, though I am certainly no expert. Thanks.

Negative several hundred percent growth, huh? That would be a severe problem for any business indeed.

Actually, things are even worse for Novell than you have stated. At that rate, they’re going to have to pay other companies to take their Linux products. Yes, that’s right, due to the deal with Microsoft, they’ll have to pay $5000 an installation.

Of course, that leads to the problem that demand for Novell’s Linux will skyrocket if they’re paying companies to take it, so let’s say they get 100,000 orders next quarter. That will be a loss of $500,000,000 in just one quarter!

Gee, how wonderful is the liberty that we get with this site! When you can just write down anything you want and pretend it makes sense, life is really interesting! The FSF could learn a thing or two about freedom. How about adding a fifth freedom to the GPL that says your software can do anything you want it to do, so long as your desires are sincere.

As always, they made a deal with Microsoft, so if it’s anti-Novell, it must be correct.

We are having a good laugh at your expense on a forum I frequent. May I have your permission to post your explanation there? It’ll have them ROFLTAO.

You aren’t familiar with corporate financial reports, are you?

It works like this. Typically, a corporation may do half of its business in a single quarter. As an easy example, for retailers at least here in the US, that’s normally the quarter before Christmas. It follows that for such retailers, the quarter after Christmas is often much smaller than the previous quarter, even if they are growing. Likewise, a tax services business will do probably 80 or 90 percent of its business in a single quarter, over 50 percent in a single month, the one taxes are due.

The comparison is thus much more accurate if done against the same period last year, thus accounting for seasonal variations. Each quarter is compared against the same quarter the previous year, not against the previous quarter.

Thus, your math above is based upon an invalid assumption. Each quarter is compared against the same quarter a year ago, and we have the first quarter up 659% against the year ago quarter, the second quarter up only 114%, the third up only 95%. The trend is clear, and if it contiinues, first quarter next year will be negative several hundred percent even if the base growth continues, because most of this year’s figure for that quarter was the one-time boost in sales from MS. (I’ve not bothered doing the specific math.)

Duncan

We’ll start with some arbitrary number to use as Novell’s Linux sales, say 10,000 units. Then we’ll apply the year-over-year growth numbers you show above.

10,000 + 659% = 75,900 an increase of 65,900 units
75,900 + 114% = 162,426 an increase of 86,526 units
162,426 + 95% = 316,731 an increase of 154,305 units

I’m sorry, explain to me again how this is a slowdown in sales.