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Comment by gitarr | Hacker News Reader

I agree with most of the article, but the "The Ubuntu Unity failure" was only a temporary one.

The author says it got better, but in reality Unity already overtook Windows' UI and it will overtake Apples UI with one of its next iterations.

As a younger (though not that young) developer I have to agree that using MS developer tools is the wrong way of doing things for most new software, not all of them though, it sure has its uses. But I am strongly against proprietary software that only runs on one OS as that will only lose you business. Even the game platform Steam seems to have gotten to that point, a Linux port is on its way.

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The great thing about propietary software and one OS (Windows specifically, OS X too though) is people using those operating systems expect to pay for their software. I'd love to come out with a Linux version of my software, but I'd then be competing with 10 free versions, and worse, a mindset that expects everything to be free. I gotta eat!

This is the same issue with mobile development that the author seems to be pushing everyone towards. Your app might really be worth $50, but guess what... you'll be selling it for $0.99 or you won't be selling it at all.

Before you classify a whole community of users as cheapskates look at the data - http://www.inatux.com/?r=humble-indie-bundle-shows-gnu-linux...

Thanks for that -- a bit surprising really (current stats show Linux users out giving the other two). Is that because they are more willing to pay for software as Linux goes mainstream, or desperate for games? (honest question)

Unfortunately I dont know the answer to that.

More willing compared to what? On what did you base the opinion that Linux users were opposed to paying for stuff?

There is definitely a hunger in the Linux community for quality commercial applications in areas where open source has not traditionally managed to perform so well (Image/Video editing, games etc).

You would certainly have limited luck trying sell a C compiler or package manager to Linux users for sure, but there are certainly areas (including some developer tools)where there could be a market.

If you released (say) an image editor for Windows and Mac you are competing with Photoshop as well as countless other programs, whereas if you release for Linux you may have less potential users (although there are still an estimated 30 million) but you are competing with The Gimp.

There is a subset of Linux users who would never consider any commercial software, but this is pretty small percentage, at least that is certainly what Valve is banking on.

Mac users do expect to pay for software sure, but Windows users? Not so much since Windows seems to be the platform with the highest piracy as well as countless horrible "freeware" programs.

And Krita: http://www.krita.org/

> I agree with most of the article, but the "The Ubuntu Unity failure" was only a temporary one.

Absolutely. Unity in 12.04 is very solid. There's still a lack of settings options, but I don't think that warrants the whole thing being called a "failure".

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