On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 05:30:06PM -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
> > So to take this to the next step, what specifically (other than just
> > marketshare) is stopping Adobe and Autodesk from porting to Linux, and
> > what is stopping system providers from pre-installing it on new PCs?
> > I imagine DTL has access to contacts at each of these companies and
> > could gather this feedback?
>
> I've talked to senior executives at companies like Adobe and
> Autodesk about this question.
>
> My understanding is that lack of market demand is the deal
> killer, period.
This matches what we've heard in other quarters, so fits with our
original assumption.
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. 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. For them, Linux may prove to be large enough and worth the
investment as it continues to grow. Thus our approach at trying to make
it easier for ISVs to port through docs, standards, etc. is a good
approach.
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?
Anecdotally, this weekend I advised a product manager that is managing a
port of some solaris desktop software to also run on linux. He had no
experience with linux, so his questions were pretty basic:
* What types of porting issues do I need to worry about? Line ending
formats? Filename formats? About how much effort should I budget
for dealing with these issues?
* My app has a GUI front end. How do I determine how hard it will be
to port that to run on Linux? What options do I have?
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.
Bryce
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