[Desktop_architects] Applications and pre-installed machines

David Legg david at actuaria.co.uk
Mon Jan 23 16:49:35 PST 2006


On Tuesday 17 Jan 2006 22:51, Bryce Harrington:
> So this reinforces the strategies we came up with at the DAM:  Make it
> easy for "little" 3rd party developers to take advantage of the Linux
> niche.

Arghhh. I grimace with pain every time I hear this one. It's a mantra that 
has been preached for years.

> The Linux marketshare may be too small for the big players, but 
> it may be very enticing to isv's that have been squeezed out of
> Windows.

All ISVs that are targetting non-Windows platforms, and are surviving out 
of it, are currently doing so, and there aren't that many of them. 
Everyone else is using Windows because it is easier to do so and because 
that's what their userbase uses. You're talking about en extremely small 
splash in a small rock pool, that is itself surrounded by a very large 
ocean.

Targetting markets and people that have themselves been marginalised by 
Microsoft is a strategy that Microsoft's competitors have increasingly 
used over the years, pushing them into even more niche markets and 
marginalising them even more. Claiming you don't compete with Microsoft is 
not a strategy that is destined to be successful in the desktop world.

> Maybe the right question to ask is not what's hindering Autodesk,
> etc. but rather what other companies are struggling in their markets and
> are desperate for any marketshare at all, and then ask what *they* need
> in order to port to Linux?

An installed userbase, a development framework, development tools, a stable 
target platform and a method of delivering their software to their 
users ;-). Forget the ISV portal documentation thingy for now. That's a 
peripheral thing to the actual problems, and is a *huge* amount of work 
for no payback.

> Basically, once he revealed that the GUI was written in TCL/Tk, I told
> him to just put the tarball on Linux and give it a go; chances are good
> that it may port directly over, with very little work.  Their initial
> WAG at the porting effort was 4 months, but I told him that seemed way
> high.

Honestly, how much are projects like that going to boost desktop Linux 
usage?

regards,

David



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