On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 16:06:48 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 09:06:05 +0000, vish 99 wrote:
>
>> Now I want to find out why the software developers don’t develop their
>> applications for Linux.
>>
>>
>> - Do they don’t have have expertise.
>> - They don’t consider investing time considering small linux market. -
>> They simply don’t bother.
>> - Microsoft won’t allow them 
>> - Or any other.
>
> They don’t perceive the market is big enough - it’s as simple as that.
> Microsoft doesn’t tell anyone “don’t develop for Linux” - in fact,
> Microsoft does development for Linux itself (they have been one of the
> top companies with individuals contributing to the kernel a couple
> times,
> actually).
>
> Software businesses, like other businesses, are in it for the money. If
> they perceive a market is big enough, they’ll develop for it. They’re
> not generally going to spend money to develop in a market that they
> don’t think they can make money in.
Put another way:
Say you have a development team with 20 developers, each of which make
upwards of $120K a year (not an unreasonable figure IME when you add in
benefits on top of base salary).
That’s $2,400,000 in salary.
Now add in the cost of equipment. Most developers I know have more than
1 computer for development - and access to labs to test the software in.
Let’s say 3 computers on average that need to be maintained per developer
(again, based on my experience, that’s not unreasonable and probably
low). With maintenance, OS, and other software licensing costs, let’s
ballpark it at $10,000 (generally professional grade machines are used;
where I work, everyone has Apple equipment, which is a bit more
expensive). That’s another $200,000 in expense, bringing the total to
$2.6 million just for the development team.
If I produce a piece of software that costs $100 per license, I need to
sell 26,000 software licenses just to break even.
Then I need people who support the product (because no matter how good
the community is, in professional software development there is the
expectation that you can pick up the phone and talk to someone when your
business depends on an answer to a problem). I need to plan that based
on expected sales, and pay those support staff fair market value for
their time.
Most software serves a specialized purpose, so you have to look at your
target audience and see what they use as a platform. Say you’re talking
technical writing, where until fairly recently, the gold standard was
Adobe FrameMaker. Only available on Windows (not even on Mac any more).
What would it take for Adobe to produce FrameMaker for Linux (which they
actually did at one point)?
A group of Linux users who does technical writing who needs the features
of FrameMaker in order to do their job.
There aren’t 26,000 people in that position. Most technical writers use
Windows or OSX for their work.
So then the company has to decide - are we a charity? Do we still do it
and instead of selling it for $100 a copy, sell it for $200 a copy? If I
sell it for that much on Linux but for $100 on other platforms, customers
aren’t going to migrate, so I have to look at if I increase my pricing
across the board, what are current customers going to do when it’s time
to upgrade? (Or if I sell as a subscription - which provides a more
predictable revenue stream, if I increase the cost of my subscription
service, how are customers going to react to that price increase if they
don’t perceive new features if they’re not changing platforms?)
Creating cross-platform software is not an easy task when the software is
very complex.
Most companies aren’t going to decide they’re a charity - they want to
see an ROI, and with Linux users (and the perception that Linux users are
interested in “free” (as in beer) - and if they can’t get it for no cost,
they’ll just steal it anyways - because sadly, too many Linux users take
that approach. While piracy is a problem on Windows and OSX, at least
they can make some money there to offset the perceived loss to piracy
losses.
Linux on the desktop isn’t a big thing for desktop software companies.
They could make it a big thing by investing in it, but they all want
someone else to make the investment so they can just come into a market
that already exists - because building markets is more expensive and
riskier.
On the server, it’s a very different thing. My employer’s on-premise
products do run on Linux - because they’re server services. Why do we do
it? Simple: There’s money in it.
So it’s not a simple “just write for Linux” answer. The thing that drives
the software industry is money.
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C