Few things to outline my perspective. . . . . I don't like paying for hardware more than its worth. I don't like paying for software.
These are important aspects of the demographic that uses Linux on the desktop and laptop. It and the ideological zealots are why there's no commercial software for the Linux laptop or desktop.
The drift from desktop software to software as service (usually free up to some capacity) is a good thing for linux because it fills some gaps in availability of some useful software on linux.
Personally I had far worse experiences with commercial software than with free software so I am not especially eager to see commercial software on linux. I think on linux commercial software has hard time competing with the software developed open source way.
Having used desktop Linux since 1997, this year I switched to a Mac because I expect to spend less time adminning a Mac than a Linux box.
ADDED. One reason I expect to spend less time adminning a Mac is because some things cannot practically be changed on a Mac because of lack of source code. Also, more loose end are tied up on the Mac than on any Linux distro I can think of.
Most people can probably resist the temptation to tie up the loose ends better than I can, though.
I use both Mac and Linux on the desktop and in my experience a recent Ubuntu and OS X require about the same amount of admin time. Which is to say not that much.
_APT just doens't cut it. In a recent review of using a Macbook, former GNOME Quality Control lead, Luis Villa, wrote [1]:
"...installing new software [on a Mac] is insanely nice._
_Upgrading_ software under APT (or Arch Linux's pacman) is very nice. On the Mac, though, each software publisher rolls their own way of upgrading installed application; do they not? But, yeah, Linux lacks proprietary applications.
I have found this to be true during my experience living in the Bay Area as an adult for the last 23 years. In particular, although living in the Bay Area has allowed me to meet extremely wonderful people who enrich my life, I have also met many worthless people who seem to drag down everyone who gets mixed up with them. "Dangerous" is probably not the best word for getting mixed up with them: "costly" is probably better. It has been my experience that most of the "costly" relationships I have had are with neighbors and only one of the beneficial relationships I have had has been with a neighbor -- and that relationship was vastly less beneficial than many of the relationships I have has with non-neighbors.
The reason it turned out this way is not hard to explain: unless you are a landlord or are buying a house and participate in a "cohousing" venture, there is almost no way in American to choose your neigbhors, and it is difficult and expensive to put distance between yourself and a neighbor (because moving is difficult and expensive).
Note that a large part of human communication is "signalling" by which I mean making oneself appear as virtuous as possible and making oneself appear to have the character traits that people want in a friend or a coworker.
And note that the way I would signal virtue or good character traits in this conversational thread is to say that I always get along with everyone and that I love all my neighbors.
But I did not do that. Instead, I intentionally chose to risk leaving the (false, IMHO) impression that I might be hard to get along with in order to counteract what I see as the overly rosy picture painted by our society about the value of warm relationships with one's neighbors (relative to warm relationships with non-neighbors) -- and in order to give some of the younger people reading this the benefit of my life experience. (I am 49.)
It is of course often extremely beneficial to live with someone who loves you, I should add -- and that is worth going for because it is much less expensive to choose your housemates or apartment mates than to choose your neighbors.
Your company is growing 100% year over year. It's profitable and throwing off cash. Why not wait another year and let revenues double again, which will make the company six times more valuable (assuming 3x revenue valuation, a reasonable ballpark for a growing software company).
Unless I misunderstand the situation in some basic way, there is a math error in the above. (Of course, even if there is indeed a math error above, that does not make the whole blog entry worthless.)
First let me restate what I take the above unambiguously to says:
it says that if the company continues to grow 100% year over year, valuation a year from now == 6 times valuation today.
My math: valuation a year from now == 3 times revenue a year from now == 3 times (2 times revenue today) == 2 times (3 times revenue today) == 2 times valuation today.
you are missing the fact that the last "(3 times revenue today)" factor which you just dropped means you are expecting the company to triple its revenues next year, which means the normal rules won't apply (to that extent) so you can charge a premium today for potentially growing more than 100% YoY. On re-reading I guess you've managed to confuse me as well and my brain is about to explode from cognitive dissonance its experiencing right now.
The writing in the parent is significantly better than the writing in the original post (the web page not on Hacker News). So, thanks, danielrhodes, for summarizing!
