Re: tlug: Re: Many Faces on Linux

[Jonathan Byrne - 3Web <jq@example.com>]

On Fri, 25 Sep 1998, Andrew S. Howell wrote:

>After your and Jonathan's post, I realized that I have be living in a
>(UNIX) shell too long. The shareware movement seems to be mostly PC
>based, or rather most (all?) of what I use is not shareware.

Oops, got distracted and sent that last one before I was done :-)

As I was saying, shareware is something that has the potential of being good
for Linux, if authors can be attracted to the platform and sold on the value
of open source.  Right now, pretty much everything is free, and I think we
will see (indeed are seeing the beginnings of) emerging high-quality desktop
software that is also Free.  However, some of these things tend to be slow in
coming  because the authors have to work to support themselves, and while they
dedicate as much time to writing their Free software as they can and they work
very hard at it, this can make things take a long time to make it through beta
and become a finished product.

If people could write open source shareware and make money on it while
providing source to registered users (at least, and maybe to everyone), the
ability to make money from writing Linux shareware could allow some talented
authors to work at that full-time or semi-full-time and help expand the pool
of developers working on Linux.

As we have seen with Windows (a commercial success), OS/2 (generally a
commercial failure), and MacOS (somewhere in between, I guess), one of the
things that influences how much of the market you can capture is how many
developers you can attract, and keep attracted to, your platform.

Microsoft was able to quickly attract lots of them to Windows 95 and drew some
away from other platforms.  This helped them spread Windows 95.  IBM failed to
attract many to OS/2 and failed to retain a lot of the ones it had attracted,
and this helped drive OS/2 down.  Apple has lost some to Windows 95 and has
fought very hard to retain as many developers as possible.  Losing most of
their remaining developers to Windows 95 would be fatal. 

Gaining developers, especially gaining Windows 95 developers who either come
over to Linux or at least port their products, can help push Linux to larger
market shares.  Ports from Windows 95 would be especially good, since the
should be able to import the files of the Windows 95 versions, easing the
transition for people who are migrating, or considering migrating, from 95 or
NT Workstation to Linux.

Cheers,

Jonathan Byrne
Media and Content Section
3Web - Your Internet Solution! <URL:http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/index.en.html>
3Web Channel <URL: http://www.3web.co.jp/index.en.html>

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