Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on July 25, 2002 06:57 PM
Well, I've never heard of osdir.com before in my life (and I've been using Freshmeat since its inception). Looking at it, it doesn't list Gnumeric under office. It doesn't list ABIWord, either. Both apps are quite stable now.
I'd guess that osdir.com is not the authoritative source on the number of Linux apps. Then, there is another problem: open source apps tend to spend a *long* time in beta. Basically, any project worth its salt stays beta until zero known bugs milestone, no matter how long it takes. OTOH, it means that a whole bunch of projects on Freshmeat are not deemed stable but are quite usable nevertheless.
That said, I'd agree that there are more Windows apps than Linux apps. That's quite obvious. But it doesn't address the main point: It's very hard for a shareware application to compete if there is *any* open source application in the related market segment.
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Re:The real problem with Shareware on Linux
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 25, 2002 06:57 PMI'd guess that osdir.com is not the authoritative source on the number of Linux apps. Then, there is another problem: open source apps tend to spend a *long* time in beta. Basically, any project worth its salt stays beta until zero known bugs milestone, no matter how long it takes. OTOH, it means that a whole bunch of projects on Freshmeat are not deemed stable but are quite usable nevertheless.
That said, I'd agree that there are more Windows apps than Linux apps. That's quite obvious. But it doesn't address the main point: It's very hard for a shareware application to compete if there is *any* open source application in the related market segment.
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