[CLUG] Desktop Linux Share Overtaking Macintosh

[Peter Flynn]

On Sun, 2004-02-15 at 09:24, Ruairi Newman wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-02-15 at 03:07, Peter Flynn wrote:
> 
> > I think the important bit is that it ought to make it marginally
> > easier to persuade authors of software currently only available
> > for Windows and Mac to port it to Linux, or companies currently
> > supplying drivers for Mac or Windows to supply them for Linux too.
> 
> Though not necessarily under a Free or Open Source license
> unfortunately.  

Sadly, yes. 

> One of the factors that will drive this is that to open-source your
> software and still make money, you need significant support revenues. 

Depends what you make. If it's hardware, then using OS drivers (and by
implication sticking to standards) just means you sell more 
kit...*provided* that your product is as good or better than the
competition. This is what terrifies the marketing suits: the prospect
of having to compete on product quality rather than entrapment of the
customer.

If it's software itself, then the only way you can make money from it
being OS is via training or support, which isn't usually enough. My
fault above, I should have made it clear that I was really talking
about supplying drivers as an ancillary to hardware. How I expected
anyone to guess this is beyond me, but it was 3.07 am :-)

> Given this situation and human nature, I wonder how long it will take
> before Linux developers become disillusioned enough to switch to the
> (less functional, but more Free) *BSD communities?

When *BSD becomes trivially installable for the end user desktop.

///Peter