Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on February 25, 2006 12:26 AM
People that offer up the "alternatives" are lying to themselves and the rest of the world. I'm forced to assume that they have never used the products that they are recommending alternatives to, or the "alternatives" themselves. The reason that all these programs are on the list is because people REALLY rely on or need these programs for business or personal use and there are no REAL alternatives in the FOSS world.
ACT! Is a mature Personal Information Manager on steroids that offers Customer Relationship Management software capabilities. ACT! has features and capabilities coming out its ears because it has been around for so long. It installs quickly and easily on an individual machine and has the capability of sharing its database with others over a network. It is easy to use and has a large install base.
SugarCRM is a server based Customer Relationship Management system written in PHP and is accessed through a web browser. It could be installed on the same machine as its client browser but, that was not its intended design. Most road warrior sales people will have difficulty running Apache, MySQL, PHP, SugarCRM, Firefox on their laptops. It is not easy to setup. It is not easy to use. It is not targeted at the same userbase as ACT!. If you squeezed the features of SugarCRM into a desktop application like Evolution, then you might have an alternative.
Visio is a diagramming software package that has developed the ability to automatically diagram many many different things. Visio can automatically diagram websites, databases, whole networks, NDS, Active Directory, and lots more. Visio can output its diagrams as pictures, HTML, and it even stores attribute information in a database that allows your diagram to be clickable, pulling up more detailed information about the objects. Visio comes with a vast array of stencils or scalable pictures that represent thousands of different types of object and there is a plethora or third party stencils available for Visio. Visio drawings are dynamic with stencils and connectors adjusting to inserts, deletes, moves, resizes automatically.
Dia & Kivio are crude drawing/diagramming applications. They allow their users to draw flow charts and stick figures manually. They have no form of automatic discovery/digramming features. There are a very few crude stencils provided with the applications and virtually no third party stencils at all. They draw stick figure flow charts with no backend database of attributes and meta data about the object. Compare these <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=visio&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images" title="google.com">Visio diagrams</a google.com> to these <a href="http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/scrshot.html" title="gnome.org">Dia screenshots</a gnome.org> or the FAR superior <a href="http://www.koffice.org/kivio/screenshots.php" title="koffice.org">Kivio</a koffice.org>
But, to answer your question, the desire is for the companies to offer ports. People don't mind paying for the software if it is what they want. They do not want some half-assed wanna be attempt at duplicating the software. They want the real deal that looks and works exactly as they are already accustomed to. They already know how to use Quicken and do not wish to relearn everything in order to use the inferior GnuCash. They understand the complexities of AutoCAD and do not wish to spend years learning how to make VariCAD almost do the same thing. Almost!
The reason that these software packages are on the list is because no alternative exists. I guarantee you that all of the respondents to this survey are already Linux users that have already looked at the "alternatives" and blown Coca Cola out of their noses in response.
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Lying to yourselves!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on February 25, 2006 12:26 AMBut, to answer your question, the desire is for the companies to offer ports. People don't mind paying for the software if it is what they want. They do not want some half-assed wanna be attempt at duplicating the software. They want the real deal that looks and works exactly as they are already accustomed to. They already know how to use Quicken and do not wish to relearn everything in order to use the inferior GnuCash. They understand the complexities of AutoCAD and do not wish to spend years learning how to make VariCAD almost do the same thing. Almost!
The reason that these software packages are on the list is because no alternative exists. I guarantee you that all of the respondents to this survey are already Linux users that have already looked at the "alternatives" and blown Coca Cola out of their noses in response.
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