Dan, thanks for your reply, which I read with great interest ! I
certainly shouldn't presume upon myself to comment upon your mental
state - I used to do that sort of thing professionally and am aware of
the limits of diagnosis-at-a-distance - nor do I think it would be
correct to dismiss Wine with a «Wine sucks !». As you have recused
yourself from further debate, there's no point in my replying
specifically to all your comments ; let me here, however, note that in
signature Artinvent's response to the article to which you provided a
link, the passage you cited is immediately followed by the following
paragraph :
Many of these specialized programs are hideously expensive, and that
presents an opening to FOSS. What is really needed is for ISV's to
start targeting these specialized industries, using the tried and true
philosophy of Open Source: give away the app, remove barriers to
entry, allow everyone to work on it, grab a foothold in the market by
being the no-cost alternative, then charge for support, training,
service. Works for Red Hat and a ton of others. It can work in
specialized industries too.
Making good applications available to users free of charge, but
devising other ways monetising the service is, if I understand it
aright, precisely Google's business model, which seems to have been
hugely successful thus far. Perhaps native support for Picasa on Linux
(including 64-bit boxes !) could find a place within this model ?...
Let me say in closing that I don't think that I speak only for myself
when I say that the work you developers have done on Picasa for Linux
is highly appreciated. There should be no misunderstanding about
that....
Henri
On Aug 13, 3:33 pm, dank <
daniel.r.ke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 12, 9:37 am, mhenriday <
mhenri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > To break this circulus vitiosus, somebody with the power to
> > change things has to act - and who better than Google ? Google must
> > realise that a situation in which there exists a functioning market
> > for OS is to the firm's advantage, just as it is to its advantage that
> > there now exists a functioning market in web browsers, thanks to the
> > the success of Firefox - something perhaps not unconnected to the fact
> > that Google has provided the Mozilla Foundation with a significant
> > degree of support. I'm not suggesting that Google go into the OS
> > business or underwrite Linux distros, but it might not be a bad idea
> > if popular apps like Picasa for Linux were given native support,
> > instead of a Wine workaround....
>
> Wine, if it works properly, is far more than a workaround.
> Indeed, it might be a key part of making Linux a success on the
> desktop.
> Here's a hypothetical question for you (and I'm not speaking for
> Google here):
> which would have more impact on Linux's market share: a native
> Picasa,
> or a Wine that can run most key applications well? Ashttp://
www.thestandard.com/news/2008/08/07/ibm-exec-linux-apps-im-tir...