Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 10:24:56 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Phil Regnauld <regnauld@ftf.net> Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Market share and platform support Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990908100529.05259560@localhost> In-Reply-To: <19990908114806.04124@ns.int.ftf.net> References: <4.2.0.58.19990907234944.047c0980@localhost> <Your <4.2.0.58.19990901152642.047b0250@localhost> <12874.936232439@localhost> <4.2.0.58.19990907234944.047c0980@localhost>
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At 11:48 AM 9/8/99 +0200, Phil Regnauld wrote: > > The manufacturers of all of the above > > products say that, due to the gap, they have no plans to provide > > native FreeBSD ports. And what about such mainstays as TurboTax? > > For Linux, one day, maybe. For FreeBSD? Not unless it catches up. > > They DON'T say due to the "gap"! They say, "when we have > significant user base", that is "when we have x million". > > We're talking ABSOLUTE numbers, with a sizeable possible > income, not relative market share! > > Please, find me ONE example of a vendor who's given "relative market > share" as the excuse for not porting their product. O'Reilly has turned down several book proposals on BSD UNIX -- from me and from other authors -- saying that Linux has so much more market share that it offers them a greater return. Cygnus says that market share is the reason they won't port tools like Code Fusion (they do support Solaris, Windows, and NT, so it's not a GPL thing). Ditto Corel with WordPerfect Office. And the list goes on and on. The reason why market share, rather than absolute numbers, determines platform support has to do with the way virtually ALL software vendors make such decisions. (The methodology is remarkably uniform throughout the industry.) The marketing people create a list of candidate platforms and order it according to market share. The developers pick the top one or two platforms on the list and start coding; more platforms are added as resources allow. Alas, there is always a "cut line" below which the vendor will not go. This is due to the very real problem that that maintaining too many ports, or supporting too many platforms, will tax the company's development and support resources. The makers of the commercial version of TripWire, for example, told me candidly that FreeBSD was so far down that they did not believe they would ever support it. Period. They were doing NT and Linux, then considering whether to do Solaris or some other commercial UNIX next. So, you see, relative market share DOES matter. FreeBSD must get up there on the charts, or the ports will not come. And, as mentioned in another thread on this list, even open source programs will become Linux-specific. It's happening now. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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