> [BTW, the name of your employer always intrigued me. Who would work for a
> company named "micropay"? :-)]
EH! My Dad used to work for Micropay!
<scuttle and hide>
Seriously though, I'd love to see them make the Linux move. It's one of
those applications and setups that would benefit greatly. Brilliant for
support, deployment...
The trouble is, many of these companies (niche application vendors, kind of
what Micropay is) have dedicated a huge amount of resources to the "rewrite
we had to have", that being Windows. All their customers blindly beg for a
Windows version, unaware that most conversions end up as kludgy hybrids. Now
that all of those resources have been spent (not to mention Y2K and GST
work), who wants to spend the energy, time and money rewriting for Linux?
It's a difficult trap. I'm currently corresponding with staff at Barcode
Solutions, who make a DOS based inventory system for bookshops, and they're
in a very similar position. All men on deck for the Windows version, and
little interest elsewhere.
Little do they realise that deploying their software on Linux would solve
many of their troubles, and save them a TON of money. Why support 10 PC's
and all the network haranguing (as described by their staff, not I!)
involved with that when you can support one server, and ten X or text
terminals? Terminals are also heaps cheaper than the hideously expensive
no-name PC's they resell.
I'm working on/with them. First, support for Samba as a server for the
application (dBase files over the network), then DOSEmu. Hopefully, that
will convice them.
- Jeff
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