Vienna switches back to Vista | The Coffeehouse

Maddus Mattus
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

Interesting read:

http://ostatic.com/164243-blog/vienna-linux-and-pragmatism

It seems the best software gets developed on Windows, but as a Microsoft developer I allready knew that Wink

I am just curious how open-source market works. In a free market, if there is a demand, companies will write programs that fill that demand. But am I correct in assuming that in open-source land personal interest dominates the market? Or are the developers hired by companies to contribute to projects that take their interest?

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

There's some of both in the open-source world. You do have a lot of personal-interest projects out there, but you've also got a lot of projects run by companies that hire developers to contribute (i.e. Mozilla, all the work Novell does on Mono, etc.

The line between the two can also be a bit blurry, too: in OSS, there's nothing stopping a company like Canonical from contributing to a personal-interest project if they have something to add (like patches, whatever), and there's nothing stopping an individual from contributing to one of the huge corporate-run projects like Mozilla (I could find a bug in Firefox that interests me, submit a patch, and if my code were up to snuff, it would be in the next Firefox release).

Maddus Mattus
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 9th, 2008 @ 6:39 AM

I think I like Microsoft's partner strategy better. At least there is money to be made by partners (and ofcourse Microsoft). And I think it's that strategy that has 'forced' Vienna to switch back to Vista.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

In reply to Maddus Mattus

#Jun 9th, 2008 @ 7:32 AM

I think the article gives the reason:

"The problem with the kindergarten computers is apparently a particular application - a languate skills program that requires Internet Explorer."

Microsoft it helps greatly when people don't follow basic things like web standards and code directly to Windows or Internet Explorer. There is a few quotes around from various anti-trust cases where Microsoft executives basically admit that their stuff sucks, and that the only reason they are doing so well is because other people are making good stuff ontop of their platform.

brian.shapiro
things go on as always

In reply to Bass

#Jun 9th, 2008 @ 4:31 PM

More likely, it uses an Web Browser windows forms control; which has nothing to do with standards.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

In reply to brian.shapiro

#Jun 9th, 2008 @ 4:33 PM

Sadly, you can't have a standards compilent website which relies on Windows-specific functionality.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to Bass

#Jun 9th, 2008 @ 4:37 PM

There is no mention of a website. Quite likely it's an actual Windows application that embeds Internet Explorer.

brian.shapiro
things go on as always

In reply to Sven Groot

#Jun 9th, 2008 @ 7:21 PM

That's what I was thinking, although it seems strange that its reliance on IE was cited, when the application, supposedly, would require Windows to run just for being a Windows application.