Thursday, July 27, 2006

Commercial Linux Software .... What it needs to succeed

I've been reading a lot of technical articles at popular tech sites about software vendors writing a Linux version of their software. Great!!!

This means a few things:
1) Linux is being recognized by the industry as an entity that must be acknowledged because we are not going anywhere.
2) The suits are becoming aware of Linux in general and feel that there is a possibility of a market of profitability within the Linux world, which is something I think will contribute in a positive way. (Novell has proven that fact)
3) Users who were once upset because their favorite/most used application on other platforms is either on its way to the Linux world or is already available and this will drive the user base in a positive fashion.

What needs to be done in my opinion:
I think companies looking to create and distribute Linux software need atleast 5 developers on hand that run only Linux and each run a different distro. Each of these developers needs to be using one of the most commonly used distros in order to distribute packages that will play nice with the systems they target.

You need a developer running one of each: RHEL/CentOS/Fedora (I don't care which), SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, and Slackware.

Why?
Because each of these operating systems account for approximately 90% of the Linux world through child/derived distros, etc. Each of these developers should be working together to write or port the software and then package it for the distro they are working on. That way when I go out and purchase this incredible piece of software for my home machine that runs Xubuntu or for my server that runs debian; I am able to run into work to my SuSE workstation and also have the convenience of the same software. Also, I am able to spread the word and nobody is left out (because even Gentoo users can install tar.gz if they must).

Is it full-proof?
Probably not, but I think that most of the community (if not all) that is willing to pay for quality software will agree that this is a wonderful idea and would make the acceptance of commercial software into the Linux world a much more fluent process.

... That's my piece, late.

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