Linux Laboratory: An article/op-ed entitled “If You Port it, We Will Pay.” It’s about Linux and that if commercial software were available for it, Linux users would buy it. This may be true, but there used to be a game porting company called Loki Games, who went out of business because they were not able to sell enough copies. I don’t have the energy to write much more, but here’s the leadin for the article:
I can’t help but get the feeling that companies like Real Networks, Adobe, Macromedia and yes, even IBM think that us penguins are all just about the cheapest birds on the entire face of the technology ecosphere, or whatever Microsoft is calling it these days (oh yeah, they think we’re cheap, too). At the same time, Linux, one of the flagship products of the open source/free software movement, is such a buzzword that all of these companies – and many others – want to somehow associate themselves with the community. As a result, we see things like Real Player, Adobe Acrobat, IBM’s ViaVoice and other popular programs being ported to Linux. This all sounds great on the surface, but truth be told, these products are only wannabe imitations of their fully functional cousins that work wonderfully under Windows (for as long as you can get Windows to work, anyway).