On 20 Jul 2024 17:25 +0800, from jeremy.ard...@gmail.com (jeremy ardley): >> A lot of paid-for programmer time isn't necessarily for what the >> individual programmer_wants_ to do. If one's employer dictates that >> their products should support Mac OS and Windows, for example, then >> there's usually little that a programmer, no matter how motivated, can >> do to extend that support to include Linux; especially if the product >> in question is heavily dependent on OS-specific APIs. > > There are plenty of applications that run O/S agnostic.
Yes. And there are plenty of (quite possibly a far larger number of) applications which require one of a small set of particular operating systems, especially once you get into specialized expert tools; and even people who need those particular applications for their day-to-day work, and who _can't_ easily switch to an alternative implementation of the same general concept. That there exist counterexamples doesn't help those who _need_ to run applications which don't run well - or at all - under Linux. And it puts quite a lot of people off to be told "just switch to an open-source alternative, it's easy" when they mention that their day-to-day use requires _particular, specific_ applications which are only available for proprietary operating systems; often without even naming them or what those applications do, sometimes because they are so specialized that few outside of some specialized field would even recognize the name, much less be able to intelligently suggest alternatives. Don't get me wrong; I advocate for Free alternatives where those are reasonable. Most people don't actually need specialized tools, and for a large subset of those who do, reasonable alternatives _do_ indeed exist. But quite a few do need specific tools that _aren't_ cross-platform, and failing to recognize that reflects poorly on _everyone_. -- Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
