Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!
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@blakeyrat I dislike the logo. This product is evidently useless.
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@Gribnit Yeah but that logo would have been great in a 1972 Beatles film.
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Why is paid proprietary software on Linux news? It's kind of always been a thing. Not super common, but it's always existed.
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@mikehurley said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Why is paid proprietary software on Linux news?
- Canonical actually asked for it (apparently because their stable of open source developers were too incompetent to create an Office365/Exchange compatible email client)
- This is consumer-grade software, not like some $50,000 CAD system
- The article contains tips for other people who want to do the same thing
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Hmmm.....that looks intriguing. I think I may try it out.
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@boomzilla said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Hmmm.....that looks intriguing. I think I may try it out.
Their pricing page is a bit confusing, though.
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@boomzilla Well if you plan on using it more than 3 years, get the lifetime.
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@blakeyrat that's what you'd think, but both plans give indefinite updates and new features.
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@boomzilla Oh I missed that. Wow. I only assume the caption below the "Annual" plan is a copy-and-paste error, but who even knows.
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@boomzilla Indefinitely for the first year. Also they're completely FREE after the initial payment.
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@anonymous234 Indefinitely for the first year, that is not so much indefinite, it having the end point and start points well defined, to the point of "well defined".
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To be fair to Canonical, they've had their "app store" and have been trying to promote commercial software in it for a long time.
The big question here is: if you believe in commercial software so much, why are you developing a free open-source OS? Do you believe it works for one but not the other?
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@anonymous234 Probably the lattermost, there. The division might end up falling somewhere around the "natural monopoly" / "utility" line.
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The most surprising and delightful aspect of this journey has been the feedback from Linux users. To put it mildly, they care about software. Many of them are software developers themselves. We call it professional sympathy! Their generosity, quality insights and willingness to help us squash bugs have accelerated the pace of our development and learning dramatically. So much so, that if I ever end up building another product, I’ll be going Linux first.
This is a bit interresting, and I think this is because of the stuck up elitist way open source has a reputation for. "It's open source, fix it yourself!"
A responsive dev that actually listens to feedback and fixes bugs? Fuck yeah!
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@Carnage The problem is Linux bugs are all like "I should be able to script this in Perl and read my emails in VIM!!!!" and not things like "hey this font is a little hard to read, and your controls should grey-out if they aren't applicable in the current context".
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@blakeyrat Like mentioned above, freedom is more important than functionality to them. Sort of like the USA.
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@anonymous234 said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
The big question here is: if you believe in commercial software so much, why are you developing a free open-source OS? Do you believe it works for one but not the other?
Not all Linux users are GPL extremists
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@sockpuppet7 The vast majority of deployed users aren't. The majority of home users might still be.
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@anonymous234 said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
The big question here is: if you believe in commercial software so much, why are you developing a free open-source OS? Do you believe it works for one but not the other?
I don't understand why this is a "big" question. They want people to use their stuff. The availability of more stuff that works on their stuff makes more people want to use their stuff.
Who doesn't like stuff?
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@anonymous234 said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
if you believe in commercial software so much, why are you developing a free open-source OS?
Microsoft believe in commercial software, yes?
They develop a commercial OS and software, but also does a bunch of free open-source apps.Does your question apply to them too?
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@TimeBandit said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Microsoft believe in commercial software, yes?
In 2018? Kind of.
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@Gribnit said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
@sockpuppet7 The vast majority of deployed users aren't. The majority of home users might still be.
The posted article discussed this, there was a reasonable amount of linux users paying for their software. Relevant quote:
Financially speaking, I do believe you can make a living out of selling software to Linux users alone. But we couldn’t rely on just Linux users right now. I will say that it pays for itself though, and the numbers are gradually increasing. The market is definitely large enough to support a business like ours. Worth noting that Hiri is Exchange/Office 365 only at the moment. We are working on Gmail/IMAP support, and we think this will attract a lot more Linux users.
Pricing wise, we haven’t noticed anything that distinguishes Linux users from everyone else. They are no more cost conscious than Mac / Windows users. They are definitely willing to pay for software.
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@boomzilla said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Who doesn't like stuff?
People who just want to complain about stuff?
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Open source works very well when it is sufficiently attractive with the developer population in relation to its complexity. I don't see why Canonical should make a proprietary OS, there's no point in doing so.
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@admiral_p Are they still running from some rich idiot's trust fund, or do they actually have a working business plan yet?
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@blakeyrat said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
working business plan
Canonical's business plan seems to be working very well for whoever maintains Linux Mint.
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In addition, Canonical wants (on paper at least) to be all things to all people, so they don't care if software is proprietary or not. Some of their services are/were proprietary too.
Open source developers are not too incompetent to make an Exchange-compatible mail client, there is nobody really interested in coding one (or the feature). Mainly because, I suspect, not many use mail clients these days compared to the past, or they may be content with their web clients (if you're going to keep the browser open at all times, you might as well keep a tab open on GMail or whatever).
There are lots of applications which have no open source alternative (or there is one and it's not good or convenient enough). Audio/video production for example. (Ardour is decent but you'll miss out on tonnes of Win/Mac-only plugins, in fact when they started offering Ardour on OSX and later Windows I seem to remember there was a significant development boost). Another is MATLAB, mainly because if you need the advanced capabilities of MATLAB, chances are the institution/company you work for is "happy" paying for it for you (happier than taking the trouble to contribute to Octave, that is) and many apparently just use NumPy/SciPy.
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@blakeyrat I have no idea. It's not my money.
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@admiral_p said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Open source developers are not too incompetent to make an Exchange-compatible mail client, there is nobody really interested in coding one (or the feature). Mainly because, I suspect, not many use mail clients these days compared to the past, or they may be content with their web clients (if you're going to keep the browser open at all times, you might as well keep a tab open on GMail or whatever).
I use kmail with IMAP. It does fine with email but I have no exchange calendar integration. The respond to meeting requests stuff is broken (maybe it's fixed in the trunk, but it's not in kubuntu 18.04 yet!) so even to see what time someone is proposing I currently have to open up the webmail client.
I actually like korganizer, but it would really be better to be able to use my company's exchange calendar the way
GodMi¢ro$oft intended.
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As we're talking about this stuff, can anyone recommend a decent calendar service which works well on Linux (or it can be web-based, I suppose) with apps on Android and iOS.? The company I work for (well, the secretary of the company I work for) is happy to use Evolution's (offline) calendar, and just sends us photos of next week's schedule in Facebook Messenger. (...it sort-of works actually, the only problem is that when things change mid-week you have to keep track of it). Google Calendar, she says, is inconvenient because Evolution lets you categorise events so that she can have an overall view of lessons and stuff, and at the meantime filter by teacher, and there is no easy way (last time I checked) to export Evolution's calendar data to Google Calendar keeping the tags and filters and stuff. Of course it has to be free (that's the catch). It's only a small company and we run Linux on like ten-year-old computers that just about chug along.
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@admiral_p said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Open source developers are not too incompetent to make an Exchange-compatible mail client, there is nobody really interested in coding one (or the feature).
If only they paid their developers they might be able to just tell them what to make. Crazy thought.
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@blakeyrat there already is somebody making one, it's right at the top of the thread. Judging by the tone of the blog post, they're not making millions. I suppose that there aren't too many people who are interested in such a feature, so why pay people to code it? Crazy thought, snark snark heehee.
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@admiral_p I couldn't read this, it gave me a headache. Won't try again.
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@admiral_p The secretary needs to be told she's and to use Google Calendar.
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@admiral_p said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Open source developers are not too incompetent to make an Exchange-compatible mail client, there is nobody really interested in coding one (or the feature). Mainly because, I suspect, not many use mail clients these days compared to the past, or they may be content with their web clients (if you're going to keep the browser open at all times, you might as well keep a tab open on GMail or whatever).
Given the number of open source developers I know that use Thunderbird and Evolution despite both being crappy (and that think GMail involves selling their souls), I doubt that.
I think it has more to do with the fact that the Exchange Server Protocol Documents comprise 8,781 pages (I checked). A project of that scope starts to feel like... well, a job.
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@heterodox You don't have to do full MAPI, just Exchange ActiveSync. It's a much simpler (and definitely more modern) API, as I understand it.
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@blakeyrat said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
@heterodox You don't have to do full MAPI, just Exchange ActiveSync. It's a much simpler (and definitely more modern) API, as I understand it.
I don't disagree with you. You can probably remove 200 or so pages from that count. But you'd be surprised at how many of those documents are on how to interpret what you're getting and sending, in various contexts, with various use cases.
Moral of the story is writing an unbelievably powerful personal information manager (e.g. Outlook) is a tough task that requires more manhours than you can typically get from a volunteer work force.
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@heterodox volunteers typically do the odds and ends, or the stuff no company would ever make, or stuff many people care about (so that implementing a certain feature means that you don't have to guarantee years and years of maintenance). It's just that there is not enough interest for either volunteers to put in the work (also due to a possible cultural dislike for Microsoft and their solutions), or companies to actually pay a few developers to work on it (chances are they don't even really need a Linux client). Learning how to Exchange and keeping track of its evolution, when you may not use or care little about it, is hard work indeed; it's even harder work to adapt an existing mail client to accommodate all the features it may not even have for starters.
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@loopback0 since Evolution does not have a way, apparently (I don't use it, she does) to show the whole day, morning to evening, at least without huge gaps during our 3-hour lunch break and/or making stuff too small, what she really does is take a screenshot of the morning section for the week, then scroll down, do the same for the afternoon section, splice them together on a LibreOffice template she made and send us the photo (of the actual computer screen because she can't be bothered logging in from her PC, also because the owners sort of disapprove of social networking at work; or a printout). I've timidly tried to suggest to use something else, but there's no arguing with somebody who is happy to put all this effort.
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@admiral_p said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
also because the owners sort of disapprove of social networking at work
... but they use Facebook Messenger for internal communication?
Do you work in Bizzarro Wackyland?
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@blakeyrat to tell the truth that's only as a last resort, if the secretary doesn't manage to get hold of us when she actually has the schedule ready. Usually she gives us printouts (of the aforementioned process). We're a small business, it's the size where you can run it "informally", and we're decidedly old-school. It really works, after all. There are quite a few improvements that we could make, but they don't justify the effort.
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Will Wonders never seize. An interesting article on tdwtf, and somewhat relevant discussion. 7/10. 9/10 with rice.
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@swayde You can reward me with cash money US Dollars.
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@blakeyrat do you accept a money check?
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@gribnit said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
@blakeyrat do you accept a money check?
I'll do you a mail order!
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@heterodox said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
Given the number of open source developers I know that use Thunderbird and Evolution despite both being crappy (and that think GMail involves selling their souls), I doubt that.
I use Thunderbird and it's perfectly fine for what I need in email. Its calendar is pretty damn meh, but whatever. I have no idea what the other 3 billion features Outlook/Exchange has are, and I apparently don't need them, so .
And yes, web clients suck.
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@blakeyrat Last time I checked Oracle do run on Linux (Official support on RHEL). Is that a terribly troubling idea to you?
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@anonymous234 said in Paid, closed-source software on Linux? Shockingly not an UTTER failure!:
The big question here is: if you believe in commercial software so much, why are you developing a free open-source OS? Do you believe it works for one but not the other?
Not exactly a big one. Lots of people write commercial software for Android, which is also free open-source OS.
You should talk about the user base instead. :P