Matthew Mc Clement wrote in message <353C8B47.A9457565@global.net.uk>...

>You can make money off the
>Linux platform, but there is one very important thing you have to remember
when you write
>commercial software for Linux: It has to very well done.

Which is in my opinion just the same for Windows, if you want to sell
something, isn't it?

If Windows users buy software that is not "very well done", then I can see
two reasons for it:

1) The users don't care (bad enough) - but that is not the fault of Windows,
isn't it?

2) The users have no alternative (and I mean the application here, not the
OS) - which isn't the fault of Windows either.
For example: Inbetween doing my software-developers job here, I also have to
keep the machines of our two graphic design people running. And I am at the
point of buying a ticket to fly over the atlantic and bomb Adobe, because
their software (Photoshop, Pagemaker etc.) crashes so often or needs
bugfixes etc., it drives me crazy! Software that expensive should work more
dependently! But the designers want Photoshop and Pagemaker, because they
are the industry standard! No way to go without, so you just have to live
with the bugs!
And nobody tell me it is NT's fault, because I know better. If an
application like Photoshop crashes when you open a certain menu command,
that is almost always the fault of the application, not NT. And a bad
application crashes on Linux just as it does on NT.
I guess the lots of talk about Microsoft's "unstable" OSes come from W95 /
3.x users, where it certainly may be true. Not so for NT (in my experience).
While I can very good remember the last time an application crashed on me, I
can not remember the last time NT crashed on me. A crashed application is
easily killed. And I am using my computer (and several others) 8+ hours a
day, in development work, where buggy alpha-stage (or pre-alpha prototypes)
really lay a strain on the OS.

While reason 1 may not be as valid for Linux users (probably they really do
care how good a software is and rather buy another product instead of a
buggy one more than the average Windows user), I don't see the reason 2 not
appying to Linux users!
Or do you really think that an "In-love-with-Linux" graphic designer would
not buy Linux Photoshop (if it came out), just because it has more bugs than
it should have for the price? And rather leave the beloved Linux and go to
the Macintosh where (since it is Photoshop's homeplatform) the software may
presumably (and I am guessing here) be more bugfree? Or not use any other
"really needed killerapplication" only because it is "not very well done"?
Never! He/She would grumble and rebel (as I sometimes do with the Adobe
products), but still use the software!

Johannes.

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