Apps and Platforms

"Anonymous" pointed out on my post called "Repairo" that one reason people still use MSWin is that running things like AutoCAD under WINE under Linux are fraught with problems. At best, it requires work and experience at this point in time.

As much as I am a fan of Linux and OS.X these days, I want to state that there is nothing magical about either platform. All computer operating systems are amazingly complex bits of code written by human beings, and at any point in time it is possible that one platform is better than another, and even the term "Better" would require one to state what they mean by "Better". Better at memory utilization? Easier to cluster? Less prone to crashes? More virus proof? Sells more hardware?

That there are currently more MSWin applications is also not magical. To repeat what I said in the comment to the "Repairo" post: AutoCAD started as a Mac app, and when Autodesk saw people were willing to pay for copies of it on MSWin they ported it. If Autodesk thought enough people wanted it on BSD or Linux or the iPhone they would make a version that worked there as fast as their fingers could code.

Phrased that way, the question would *seem* to be, do enough people want any given app on Linux to bring it there. But that is not the way Linux works either. Here is where companies get into trouble not just with Linux but with all Open Source.

The real question about any Open Source platform always is: Are there enough people that want any given *type* of application that they are willing to take the time and effort to create it. In the example of AutoCAD: Are there any technical people out there that want a CAD package on Linux bad enough that they will write it themselves?

To look very quickly into that, I googled up two search terms: CAD + Linux

http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html

Over 50 CAD packages for Linux, some commercial, many Open Source. And that was just one of many hits.

The problem for a commercial company like Autodesk is knowing when the market has moved enough to a new platform to make it worth their while to port to a new OS platform. That costs a fair amount of money, and if the product is not written in a portable fashion, then it costs even more money to either port it or better, redesign it to be portable.

The problem is worse than it seems though, because in this case the Open Source world will look, maybe ask once, get a response like " We are waiting to see which way the market goes before we decide if we are going to move to the new platform", and then the Open Source folks just move on without them. By the time they decide to enter the market, the field is crowded and they are no longer the number one choice. In fact, there is now probably a free, Open Source solution sitting there and now they have to convince people that it is worth money to pay for their newly ported version.

I pay for the best. I think most people are willing to. Since I don't use CAD, I'll switch to Office packages for a second: Even though I do not have to, I send money to OpenOffice because I use their product and I like it. I like it better than MS Office because it uses Open Standard file formats, and runs on whatever platform I happen to be on.

Another example: I just paid for a copy of Scrivener recently. I am working on writing a few books, and found OpenOffice to be unable to do some things that I wanted it to do (Chapterization and organization). Some research found Scrivener, and I am extremely happy with it... other than I wish there was a Linux version. It's OS.X only. Guess what happens next? If someone comes up with a decent manuscripting program that is Open Source and cross platform, then I'll be retiring Scrivener...

All software applications are like that. Companies need to know and understand this new Open Source dynamic of platform, or find themselves playing catch-up.

Does Apple have a community?

Akshun J commented on my last post the Apple does not have community. The understandable point behind that comment is that Apple is doing some things recently that are very negatively impacting people that use their gear.

Whether or not Apple has community might be semantics, however according to any definition I have of the term, Apple does in fact have a strong community. They also have fans. They also have detractors, and in fact there is a community of detractors too.

I can't read Akshun J's mind here, but I think this might be a reference to the fact that Redhat builds community by actively sponsoring projects like Fedora, and SUSE has openSUSE project sponsorship, and LinSpire has FreeSpire, and Sun has among other things OpenOffice.org, and on and on. These are for profit companies that that actively try and build community.

Apple spends a fair amount of time doing things agains the community that has sprung up around them: that can not be denied. But to not call the folks at iPhoneDevCamp a community, or what happens around TUAW or any of the other pro-Apple community web sites a community is not accurate. They are a community, even if they are a community under seige. Apple may not value their community in the same way that Sun values theirs, but that does not mean that the community is not there. As an aside, the OpenOffice community has been hard at work on porting their excellent flagship product to OS.X, extending their community to include the OS.X one.

It can not even be catagorically stated that Apple is anti-community, because Apple is not just Steve Jobs. It is a large comapny, and there were Apple employees at iPhoneDevCamp, even if it was not in an official capacity.

The main point here is that community will exist around all sorts of things, and what Apple needs to watch out for is what their communities do may be inspired by what Apple does. Apple is creating the crucible that fires people into doing things like porting Linux or BSD to the iPhone so that they can be rid of the yoke that binds them, but still get to play with the device that they love. The same thing is true in Akshun J's references iPod article: Linux already runs on the iPod. I can have the device that I want, and use it the way that I want as well.

90% of the folks that buy iPods or iPhones are going to use them exactly as Apple designed them. Apple has no worries there. It is only that the 10% that will not use them as they are built are not going to just decide they were being silly, and they were really sorry, and "oh, OK I'll put it back the way it was meant to be" because Apple fired update 1.1.1 over their heads. The 10% are highly creative, and highly influential. They will either fix Apple, or Apple is going to find that "the next big thing" grew out of the community that they were firing at.

It is an easy fix. All they have to do is release an SDK for the iPhone to allow apps to be created for the platform. Problem solved. Or they can stay at odds with their community and be on the receiving end of the law of unintended consequences.

The new blog, same as the old blog, only not

If you have ever read "Adventures in Linux", over at http://talk.bmc.com, then you already know what this blog is going to be about more or less. Where this one will be different is that this one is going to be more about everyday, personal Linux. The BMC blog is focused on data center and corporate desktop usage of Linux.

I will admit that I have strayed from those parameters at BMC many times. I will almost certainly stray farther afield here. For one thing, Open Source is a really big place to wonder around in. Wander around in too. And for another, I am also a big Apple OS.X user, so I am sure to get into that from time to time. Putting yet another thing in the blogs title though... well. It is generally considered bad form to have the title of the blog be longer than the posts therein. There-below. Something.

I will cross link posts from here to my corporate blog so that the content in each can reinforce each other, whenever they do. I have been posting at my corporate weblog for about two years, and there are about 130 or so posts, with over 300,000 words between them.

Backing up for a moment though, if you have not read any of that, and are wondering why I might have anything relevant to say about any of this... well, fairly asked.

On being old

I am really old. Older than dirt. The first computer I played with was a Radio Shack TRS-80 model 1 (with the 16k expansion) that a friend of mines dad bought. My first experience programming was sitting up one xmas eve with another friend who knew Basic, and writing a program in ASCII special characters that displayed a tree, presents under the tree, snow falling past an outside window, and a dog randomly barking at the tree. Took all night. My friend did all the work, but I walked away from that having a pretty good idea how to program in Basic.

That long night led to a TRS80 model 4, a TI 99 4/A, Windows, OS/2, Working on the mainframe OS VM, and in the early 1990's to Linux. My first distro I bought over at Microcenter for something like 10 USD. It was a huge set of CD disks that included Slackware, and a late 1.x Linux kernel.

One thing led to another, and eventually Linux became my primary OS at the office, and I have a number of laptops around the house where I keep various versions of Linux, depending on the experiment de jour. My current main personal Linux system is an Acer 5610 laptop, w/ 2GB of RAM, running Mint 3.0.

Open Source

Even when I am not using Linux itself, I use a great deal of, and support, Open Source. This is why this blog title is longer than the one at BMC; When I started blogging about Linux at BMC, while we used open source, and we had open sourced a number of things, we had not really announced an Open Source strategy. That will be changing. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I use OpenOffice across all computer platforms (NeoOffice on the Apple, for now, although OpenOffice 2.3 Aqua is also loaded for testing). I use Parallels on the Mac (me and a zillion others, I know...) to run yet *more* versions of Linux. Many other Open Source tools as well (yes: I know Parallels is not Open Source: it just enables me to test Open Source on the Apple). I'll get more into this here over time.

That is probably enough for the first post. I'll try and get something up every week here, and another over at talk.bmc.

Stay Tuned...