From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Sat, 3/22/2025 6:00 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
      
   >   
   > Funny, you said Windows Media Center wasn’t killed by Linux, and then go   
   > on to list a long catalogue of reasons why it was.   
   >   
      
   It wasn't killed by linus, it was killed by overhead cost.   
      
   If it was costing them nothing (no bills coming in for MPEG-LA   
   licenses or no bill for Guide Data), then it would still be   
   available today.   
      
   A similar thing happened to the NVidia chipset that had five DSP   
   cores in the Southbridge. One of the cores did AC3 encoding with   
   low latency. A great little toy, for some people with SPDIF connected   
   AV receivers. Well, that did not get included in the very next chipset,   
   and the reason, was the license cost per chip (even if the customer   
   wasn't using the feature, the AC3 license had to be paid). So the   
   DSP feature wasn't used any more.   
      
   Any time there is a "line-item expense" associated with an activity,   
   a bean counter will stop it. That's how business works. As the   
   product manager, you have to show the bean counter, how you are   
   making the money back in some way. And one of the schemes for that,   
   is to make the customer buy the license when they want one   
   (from a thing such as an online Store).   
      
   On the first generation of a product idea, you can write   
   "Promotional cost" next to the line item, for its year of   
   introduction. But after a product is mature, you have to   
   justify every line-item expense. And that's how your   
   product gets canceled.   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)