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List:       userlinux-discuss
Subject:    Re: [Discuss] ISV's and Licensing
From:       Matthias Welwarsky <matze () stud ! fbi ! fh-darmstadt ! de>
Date:       2003-12-12 9:06:34
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On Friday 12 December 2003 05:37, Jake Edge wrote:
> I have a hard time believing that UserLinux will be targeted at software
> development shops.  Clearly (or hopefully) they will be users of the
> distribution, but I do not believe they are the focus.  The focus will
> be on the vast majority of enterprises that don't have anything to do
> with developing software.  If that is true, wtf does the license cost
> for developing propietary software using a particular toolkit have to
> do with UserLinux?

If not, who will then write software for UserLinux? There are not many "free" 
applications that are really "enterprise ready". About the most important 
argument for the choice of an operating system platform is availability of 
software solutions. And what we have now is not enough to be convincing.

Ximian has tried to market an enterprise desktop with GNOME, OOo and Evolution 
and I see no evidence whatsoever that they have been overwhelmingly 
successful. Their XD2 desktop is about just the same thing as Bruce envisions 
for UserLinux desktopwise: OOo, Evolution, GNOME. The only difference is that 
XD2 was meant to be distribution agnostic while UserLinux comes based on some 
specific distribution, be it Debian or whatever.

So UserLinux desperately needs ISVs to jump on the train, and I'm not seeing 
this if the primary development platform is GTK/GNOME. I can only stress that 
Sun, RedHat, IBM and Novell are _not_ ISVs. They do _not_ provide software 
solutions for the desktop. Adobe is, PeopleSoft is, etcpp.

If UserLinux only targets BIG companies whose main concern is to have a 
zero-fee toolkit for their inhouse software development, it will not succeed. 
This kind of linux distribution has been around with RedHat, Debian, etc. for 
ages and it has not been adopted.

regards,
	matthias


-- 
Matthias Welwarsky
Fachschaft Informatik FH Darmstadt
Email: matze@stud.fbi.fh-darmstadt.de

"all software sucks equally, but some software is more equal"

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