Here's an interesting question, When Will Apple Notice Linux? and more directly, when will Apple port iTunes to Linux? One possible answer seems identical to an answer I gave yesterday to a slightly different question on another of my blogs. In that case, the questioner asked why Sun doesn't port Java to FreeBSD and only to Linux/Solaris/Windows? Even as a Sun employee working in the Java group, I don't know the details about why we don't port Java to FreeBSD. But I see a similar pattern in the iTunes-for-Linux article as in the Java-for-FreeBSD article. Specifically both articles ascribe all sorts of conspiratorial scheming upon the big bad corporation.
Like I said yesterday about Java on FreeBSD, it could be very simple. It costs money/resources for a software vendor to support their product on a different platform. These things don't come for free. The business needs to see a justification for that expense.
Where does the expense come in? Well, there's the developers who port the software. They need to understand how to best use the OS/platform, and in the case of iTunes-for-Linux they would have to make a GUI toolkit for X11. Oh, and Linux is not at all a simple platform for which to develop software, because there is not just one Linux. There's a dozen or more Linux distributions, with different installer systems, system config file details, driver details, etc. And there's testing, where each new platform means a greatly amplified testing cost. Here again the multiple Linux distributions greatly amplify the testing cost.If you understand Occam's Razor you know that often the simplest explanation is the best.
Maybe it's just about the money!! That it would cost some amount to do the job, and they don't see enough return on the investment. ROI is the acronym used by business leaders worldwide.
In the iTunes-for-Linux article his attitude seems best summed up by "we can all forget about Microsoft doing anything to help Linux". That he's looking to these large companies to do something to help Linux.
Gimme a break!!
My experience with corporations from having a nearly 16 year career working for them is they are motivated by money, not altruism. If they see an ROI then they'll do something. If not, they won't. How else would you explain the existance of Microsoft Office on Linux? It's not altruism, it's money, with Office bringing in over a billion dollars of revenue from OS X users. In the 1980's I was an Amiga fan, and remember in comp.sys.amiga a bunch of angst over the lack of acceptance for the Amiga, and if only we had some major applications on the platform, and someone kept repeating how Microsoft had told them "if there were a million Amiga users we'd consider porting something to AmigaDOS". That is, again, an example of businesses thinking about ROI, as well as being an interesting echo of what's being said about Linux in the iTunes-for-Linux article.
And, as a Sun employee, I'm rather confused by this: "...I am saying that without the backing or support of the major software companies Linux on the desktop will never reach anything..." and then suggesting Apple as the savior for Linux. Uhm...
Sun is a major software company and Sun provides some very interesting and important software packages for Linux. Where would Linux on the desktop be today if Open Office did not exist??? And there's Java, and all the applications that use Java, which are available on Linux because Sun supports Linux.
(2006-01-10 08:54:51.0) Permalink
