Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 21:43:14 -0500 From: "Brian J. McGovern" <mcgovern@spoon.beta.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Cc: webmaster@spider.parasoft.com Subject: RE: Development and validation tools... Message-ID: <199701160243.VAA01304@spoon.beta.com>
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(Note to Webmaster@parasoft - This is in response to Jordan Hubbard posting about your companies request for interest in its profiling tools for FreeBSD. I thought it might be good reading for whoever is handling user responses to their queries. Could you please forward this to them? Thank you. - BJM) Jordan, I suppose I could just as easily send this email to them as to you, but I think the mailing list is a good sounding board for anyone considering writing commercial code for FreeBSD (or any OS for that matter). The problem of commercial software becomes the great chicken and the egg problem... People who write software don't want to create a new product for a platform, until they know they have a market for the product. The problem is, they won't have a market until the product is done. As a good example, in many cases, I've never been able to wedge FreeBSD in to a commercial application, simply because most managers feel its "not a commercial grade product". Unfortunately, since no one will give it a try, it will never become one because "no one else is using it, so how good can it be?". Later today, we'll also all be shooting ourselves in the foot, because everyone else IS doing that. Fortunately, I finally have a manager who doesn't have his head where the sun doesn't shine, so hes giving it a chance. Of course, he has high demands of what he expects from it. Fortunately, its been able to perform so far. Anyhow, I digress... I can not approach this company and say "I'd buy three of your packages", because I can not approach my management and say "I'd like budgetary approval for three copies of a software package that doesn't exist yet". I can't get approval to buy it until its done, and they won't do it till they have enough people to buy it. I smell Mobius(sp?) loop here... (not only does it keep going around in circles, but its single-sided, as well) As a more positive example, I think Maxis did the right thing when they ported SimCity to FreeBSD. I liked the game. The only downside was that it was a few years too late. I had exhausted my SimCity days on my PC/XT years before... Right now, I still have the floppies in my 3.5" case, but all they're doing (and will do for the forseeable future) is to collect dust. Now, I can say that if Maxis were to release a new game that I haven't played to death, preferably something multi-player that runs on a 486/33 or faster, and cost between $20-$30 per license, I know I'd buy at least two, probably three, right off the bat. Plus I'd probably try to sell it to my friends, so we could play over a modem link or the Internet. My friends and relatives all love multiplayer games, and we always but a ton of licenses when a good one comes out. As to the other people that are stepping forward, I would evaluate their software as any other. Currently, I use CVS for source control, ddd for debugging, gprof for profiling/speeding things up, X with a ton of Xterms for my development enviornment, jove for my editor, and a handful of other utilities that I can get for free to do my development. And I usually come out with a good product. Now, if they had a working product, and they could show me why their product is any better than what I currently use, I'd ask for approval to buy a copy for eval. If it then lived up to its claims, I'd probably buy a half dozen or so to equip our department. But, until I have a product, I can't go any further than to say "Well, I'd _like_ to see it". -Brian
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