Keith Peters wrote: > Pretty simple economics actually. Most people use Windows. Fact of life. > That's where you concentrate your development. How many Linux IDEs would > Adobe sell right now? Enough to justify the engineering efforts? Maybe > someday, but not quite yet. I think it's a little trickier than that, sort of like the chicken and the egg problem. How many people would switch from Windows to Linux if the software was available? How many people buy the Windows version only because there is no Linux version?
Do you need software on the platform first, or developers on the platform first? I think a better question would be, can Adobe justify the risk in building software for Linux? There's little risk in building for Windows because you know you have a developer audience. But, with Linux, the risk is higher. The developer base doesn't exist yet because software doesn't exist yet... or is it the other way around? Although for a program like FlexBuilder, already built on top of Eclipse to help ease platform dependencies, my hope is that we'll at least see FlexBuilder for Linux at some point. I understand the Linux port wouldn't be trivial, but one can only hope.. that's the main thing holding me back from switching at the moment (a good Flex 2 IDE). I'd like to see Adobe test the waters there at least... but I understand the risk since Linux users typically aren't used to paying for software, especially IDEs. -d _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
