This section was suggested by ( Orest Zborowski ) and is still under construction. It is meant to help potential commercial software developers to market their products. There are several caveats to watch when doing this, e.g. the GNU Public License . I'd appreciate anyone who wants to share his/her experience with Linux-specific marketing issues to send me some lines. Please make sure that people interested in more specific items can contact you via e-mail or fax.
Some Aspects:
Porting to Linux simply means recompiling in many,
many cases. Sometimes some #include
tweaking may
be necessary. If you develop your apps using GNU C
which is very useful sometimes, there should be
virtually no further work to do.
One big advantage with Linux is that all the source code of the operating system is freely available. Experienced programmers can easily spot the locations where problems occur and contact the "responsible" developer for assistance. I never encountered any of those guys being impolite -- just make sure you read the respective documentation first...
The persons doing the Linux port should know where to get vital information in case of problems. The Linux Documentation Project offers plenty information about all and everything and the kitchen sink. The Linux INFO-SHEET is a good place to start with for beginners.
The key to success with your Linux port is Internet access, particularly FTP access to the big Linux FTP servers as sunsite.unc.edu or tsx-11.mit.edu and their legion mirrors.
It appears that the main problem is after-sales
support. If you do market your software for Linux, you
should consider to employ someone who knows whom and
where to ask in case of problems with the OS
itself. However, you may as well expect problems to be
solved much faster in the Linux community than by
commercial Unix vendors. For example, the
/bin/login bug allowing people to log onto
Unix hosts as root
without entering a password was
solved in a fortnight under Linux, whereas IBM shipped
AIX with the broken /bin/login for another
couple of months.
After-sales support for Linux, on the other hand, can be a good opportunity for small companies and startups. If you want to sell a Linux version of your product you might want to find such a company to outsource the after-sales support (see respective section). They might even help you with the porting.
Some companies selling big and expensive software packages offer completely installed systems, i.e. the hardware, the OS and their specific software. In the contract, you can force the customer not to change parts of the OS so that problems are unlikely to occur at a later time.
The GNU Public License (GPL) contains no restriction in terms of marketing products developed with GNU tools as the GNU C compiler. Anyway, the legal strength of the GPL was never checked at court -- I doubt it can be enforced outside the U.S.A. In case of doubts, you might want to contact the Free Software Foundation .
Pricing: Well, there are three major philosophies around. Some companies offer a full or limited version for a very low fee or even for free. Others consider the Linux version as valuable as those for other OS's and offer it at a reasonable discount. Third, the price is equal to that of, say, the Solaris or the HP/UX version. Finding a reasonable price for your product may be somewhat more difficult than for other Unixes because there are many Linux users expecting everything for free ;-). Others (seriously interested customers, i.e. business people) know nothing is for free. You'll have to decide for the target customer.
A word concerning fast version shifts. This is clearly a prejudice. From the view of a software vendor, this is clearly not true. It is true that Linus Torvalds sometimes releases two or more kernel patches per week (or even more) in the hackers' corner (odd minor kernel release numbers). However, if you found a kernel doing what it's designed to do (version 1.0.9 or 1.2.0 being good choices), there's no reason to upgrade. Leave everything as it is and limit your warranty to certain kernel releases. Selling complete systems helps here, too, because you can ensure the respective kernel and its device drivers work in perfect harmony with the computer and its peripherals.
Last not least, don't forget that university and college students who are the majority of Linux users worldwide are the decision makers of tomorrow. If you offer them a reasonably priced product for their beloved operating system today, there's little question what they will choose tomorrow.
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