OT: Mac vs Win partisanship is unnecessary

[Mark Talluto]

On Jul 23, 2010, at 11:00 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Mark Talluto wrote:
> 
> > On Jul 22, 2010, at 10:39 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> >
> >> Of course.  Choosing any product, whether it's an OS or a
> >> vacuum cleaner, should ideally be done on the rational
> >> merit of the product.
> >
> > Which of your products are you intending to put on the Linux OS?
> 
> I've been shipping WebMerge on Linux for about a year now, and while we have very few Linux customers it was still worth the low cost of clicking a checkbox in the Standalone Builder. :)
> 
> I make another product for a publisher in Boston for academic markets, and with that one we've been inviting our current users to let us know about their Linux interest.  Being a multinational audience, it's pretty strong.  We expect to sell at least a few hundred licenses right out of the starting gate when we release that in Q4.
> 
> Going forward, for my own new products and a good percentage of my clients' apps we're incorporating Linux into our planning from the start.
> 
> It's not any sort of get-rich-quick scheme, but the low cost of the port allows us to pick up even a few extra licensees with a positive return.
> 
> And Linux fans really appreciated it.  A lot.  We get nice email.  It's a lot like the Mac used to be, and in some market segments still is: there's such a dearth of software for the platform that OS fans are happy to spread the good word about vendors supporting it.

I think the good will is worth a lot as well.  I spent a lot of time in the past working in all the popular Linux variants at the time.  Worked directly with Mark W on the bugs and made a number of posts to Bugzilla to get things in feature parity with the other OSs.  I just never could get things to work as well in Linux.  Got to know it well though.  I have been out of the Linux scene for about two years now and have been following all the interest in it again on this list.

On a side note, we found that the countries that wanted linux support also had very cheap access ($5.00) to Windows XP.  When we told them that we stopped development on Linux, those very same customers purchased licenses to run on their shiny new Win systems.  Our market is not geeked up.  They are not really computer users at all beyond what their job needs demand.  Thus, the culture to run on Linux was not there.  Your market would probably not see it that way.  Still was an interesting phenomenon.


Best regards,

Mark Talluto
http://www.canelasoftware.com