{"id":232,"date":"2004-12-16T12:52:04","date_gmt":"2004-12-16T19:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp\/?p=232"},"modified":"2004-12-16T12:52:04","modified_gmt":"2004-12-16T19:52:04","slug":"open-source-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2004\/12\/16\/open-source-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Source & Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"

To support Windows or not, that is the question. At least it’s a topic of increasing debate amongst some in the open source community, most notably Aaron Seigo<\/a>, a KDE hacker whose post from last week<\/a> touched off a rather interesting \/. debate<\/a>. I can’t give the topic the time it deserves – as it’s a very complex issue with multiple angles to consider, but I did want to be sure to weigh in with my take on the question. <\/p>\n

The fundamental position that Seigo is taking – at least in my opinion – is simple. The argument goes that by porting free applications – primarily designed to run on Unix variants – to Windows, the community is essentially undermining efforts to build acceptance of alternative platforms. Windows gets to draw on a wealth of native and ported applications, while its competitors are limited (for the most part) to what’s available solely for their platform. <\/p>\n

He supports his contention by highlighting the inertia typical to Windows users – i.e. that users of Windows see little benefit to switching – and argues that by porting potentially must-have applications, such as Firefox, F\/OSS developers only make this OS apathy more of an issue. <\/p>\n

There is, I’d contend, an element of truth to this. Windows is, in some sense, receiving an unfair advantage in terms of application availability. But I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing for Linux on the desktop. Nor, apparently, is Alex Bosworth<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Here are a few of the questions I’d ask to try and formulate your own answer: <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Microsoft’s applications currently and for the forseeable future will support only Windows – does the F\/OSS community think this is this a strategy worth replicating?<\/li>\n
  2. In any desktop OS migration efforts, one of the biggest challenges is retraining users on new application sets. If IT shops can standardize on F\/OSS application sets – say Firefox\/OOo, what impact does this have on IT manager’s ability to seriously consider alternative platforms? (I’ve posted on this before here<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  3. Why do people switch operating systems? Or put differently, is it plausible to believe that users will migrate from Windows to Linux just to get Firefox?<\/li>\n
  4. Generally speaking, where are F\/OSS applications most competitive with Windows applications currently? Feature\/function or cross-platform support?<\/li>\n
  5. What should the goal of application developers be – the widest possible market for their applications, or supporting a single platform?<\/li>\n
  6. As a long term play, does the F\/OSS community believe that excluding platforms from support is a beneficial policy? If so, who does it benefit?<\/li>\n
  7. Why are people choosing Linux on the desktop today – application availability, or security, reliability, and the ability to modify the code to suit your own needs?<\/li>\n
  8. Last but not least, what’s in the best interests of users?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’m sure you can deduce from my stance how I would answer the above, but I’m interested in your answers. Or if there are other questions that should be added to the list that I’m missing. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    To support Windows or not, that is the question. At least it’s a topic of increasing debate amongst some in the open source community, most notably Aaron Seigo, a KDE hacker whose post from last week touched off a rather interesting \/. debate. I can’t give the topic the time it deserves – as it’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-source"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}