Re: [gtk-list] Re: GTK+ and non-Unix OS

[<elan jeeves net>]

On Thu, 16 Apr 1998 22:17, Bill Thorson wrote:
> Personally, I hope there is never a port to Windoze.  I know that sounds
> bad but it's the way I feel.  I believe that gimp and gtk+ are two of the
> free worlds more shining stars and powerful tools in the fight against the
> evil dictator known as MS.  If you port these to Winblows you would be
> giving up our strength and giving others no reason to revolt against the
> tyranny under which they live and work.

Well, there are a couple of ways to look at it.  Right now, unarguably,
there are many more people running Winsucks than there are people running
UNIX.  The question is how to get more people to use UNIX and break the
virtual (or actual) monopoly of Microsoft.  It's my opinion that offering
suberb products like the Gimp only on UNIX is not the best way to
accomplish that.

Take the typical example of a design shop using Ph*toshop on NT.  What
would make them switch?  They're not very likely to toss out the OS and the
app and move over to UNIX + a different app, even if the app is better. 
However, if the app is available under NT, they are very likely to try it,
since it's easy to switch (simply download the app, it reads Ph*toshop
files, etc.).  Now imagine the shop goes over to using the GIMP, because
it's a superior product (if it's not, they won't have any incentive to
change products, much less OS's!!)  Now they have much less incentive to
stay on Winblows, especially if we play the same game MS plays in terms of
saying "hey, it works under Windows, but if you move over to UNIX, here are
the advantages" (they do the same with COM under UNIX, IE4 under UNIX,
etc.) or play the dirty games that MS plays and subtly crippling the
product under Windows (although perhaps running under the MS OS is
crippling enough 8-)

To summarize, with such little market share, I don't think we can win the
game of keeping the applications proprietary and hoping that people jump
OSs just to get to the products.  That's a game that should only be played
and can only be one by the market share leaders.  We need to make the OSs
irrelevant in the picture, by providing high-quality applications across
OSs.  This is of course what Java attempted to do, but Microsoft did a good
job of bringing the platform issue back in with Win32 calls from Java and
similar things.

Just my 0.02$US.

-Elan Feingold