Open Source Vision Correction
Hindsight being what it is, I’d like to think I was right, at least on servers, in embedded devices. Let’s hold judgement on desktops for a moment.
Linux is now just expected. Kind of like VMS in the 80’s, Windows in the 90’s, if you aren’t doing Linux, you are ignoring a significant and increasing part of the market.
"So what", you say? (And you’d be right… see, no one cares).
Well the issue facing Linux is a new and increasing confusion on what Linux is. In the last year as a consultant, I’ve met with 5 companies who wanted to know: 1. which Linux to develop for? and 2. how to get out of the loop on maintaining multiple, development-incompatible Linux flavors.
Well, there’s no good answer. We still have the Linux community (the last remaining “Cares” group ready to extol the glories of their favorite distribution, be it Red Hat, Novell, Ubuntu, or my choice for a new distribution “Britney Spears Linux” the distro with nothing hidden. It’s not trivial for companies, especially small companies, to pick and create support for all of the possible choices, nor does the current “standards” cover all the possible contingencies. (But at least the Linux Foundation is trying). BTW, big companies face the exact same challenge; they may have more resources to throw at the problem.
Already, the picket signs are up. “Just make it open source and we’ll do the rest”. Yeah right…
Believe it or not, it costs real money to release a product to open source. It can cost real money to contain potential damage from bad implementations. For instance, say I release a device driver for a new Schrödinger's cat powered storage device. I open source the Red Hat version of the driver, and it gets ported off to my BSpears Linux. Some unnamed company decides to use this driver and my hardware device to store their customer database, in spite of the “not supported” comments. When the device hits 80% full, the ported driver has a seizure and crashes, taking all the data with it. Guess who gets blamed… it ain’t Britney.
So, what’s the right play here? Should I go with the Red Hat dominant market share, the Novell (a newly-indentured servant of Microsoft) distro, some version that no one in my market uses? Should I focus on Germany (one answer), Japan (different answer) or the US?
So, what’s the hindsight going to be in 2010?
as always…
Comments
It seems that (finally) the LSB is taking off and will significantly help those developing desktop-based Linux software. However, supporting multiple Linux distributions is not the biggest problem small ISVs have. It is having to support Linux AND Windows AND OSX, since rarely they support Linux alone. There is a scarcity of good multiplatform development tools/solutions for commercial crossplatform development software. While the low level toolkits (Qt, GTK, etc.) are there, the Windows/Mac rich ecosystem of tools is missing.
Posted by: Daniel Lopez | May 26, 2007 5:32 PM
I think it would be very easy to maintain a cross platform version of Adobe software. there are numerous cross-platform tool kits (i prefer) wxWidgets.
I split my time between software developing and web site developing; i use to use Dreamweaver exclusively however now i do mostly Linux development and even work for a linux software company and such find myself using Dreamweaver less and less (since i'm never in front of a windows pc).
And despite what the 'masses' believe, linux users are willing to pay for software.
Posted by: Daniel Boland | May 30, 2007 10:05 AM
Linux has a strong market share server-side due to it's stability, security and efficiency. These traits are also present on the desktop-side. KDE and gnome offer great responsiveness while offering the assurance the system will be secure, stable and efficient, which by far exceeds what both Windows XP and Vista have to offer. For you to say it would not be in the best interest of Adobe to invest the time and resources is being ridiculous and ignorant. Adobe Photoshop would run much smoother and stable under Linux than it could possibly wish to achieve under and version of Windows. Lets face it: Windows is not reliable, it is not secure, it is not efficient and it is bloated. It always has been and it always be so. Stop being a lame ass Windows fan-boy.
As a guy who hasn't been on Windows in years and got involved in Linux in 1995, I doubt Microsoft would call me a fan boy. I think you may have misconstrued my comments. My issue is not how much better or worse either is, but to indicate we are rapidly approaching a point where Linux isn't Linux, just as Unix became not Unix. Windows may be as you portray, but it would be nice to build only for one Linux.Try reading the article, not just the short words.
Posted by: Joel Anderson | January 19, 2008 9:16 PM