🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <slrn8elfi4.g18.jedidiah@localhost.localdomain>,
JEDIDIAH <jedidiah@dementia.mishnet> wrote:
> amorgado@my-deja.com <amorgado@my-deja.com> wrote:
>> damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
>>> If their applications division is separate from their OS division,
>>> they no longer have the same interest in having their applications
>>> only run on Windows; they can maximise their profit by porting them
>>> everywhere.
>>
>> You are assuming that it is possible to make more money by selling and
>> supporting MS's Application software on multiple platforms than by
> 
> Assuming that they coded their applications with portability in mind
> then deploying X other versions won't be that much more expensive.
> Plus, breaking it on a wider variety of systems will help expose
> problems with the reference codebase.

It really depends on how much support they expect to get from the "OS"
(strictly the OS and several layers of libraries on top of that.)  If
they are very tightly tied to *COM* and the Windows GDI, then porting
will be a minor nightmare, though possible, and much easier if they
get in someone else's portability layer.  There are quite a few of
those knocking about.

It'd be even better (for them) if they were required to write some
decent documentation on the multitude of interfaces about.  The
existance of books on undocumented ways of doing things indicates a
serious problem in there...

Not that it's worth doing anything much except spouting on USENET
about it right now.  This story still has a long way to run.

Donal.
-- 
Donal K. Fellows    http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/    fellowsd@cs.man.ac.uk
-- The small advantage of not having California being part of my country would
   be overweighed by having California as a heavily-armed rabid weasel on our
   borders.  -- David Parsons  <o r c @ p e l l . p o r t l a n d . o r . u s>