[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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