Fwd: Re: Building bridges by helping small ISVs

wino at piments.com wino at piments.com
Sun Dec 25 00:57:18 CST 2005



------- Forwarded message -------
From: peter at piments.com
To: "Dan Kegel" <dank at kegel.com>, wine-devel <wine-devel at winehq.org>
Subject: Re: Building bridges by helping small ISVs
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 20:53:17 +0100

On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:35:07 +0100, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:

> It's frustrating that large software vendors (Adobe,
> Intuit, Macromedia, IBM) aren't paying much attention
> to Wine, even though Wine's the quickest way for them
> to reach the Linux desktop market.  I've been trying
> to figure out why they're holding back.  After talking
> with a few large vendors and the folks working on the Munich
> migration project, I got the distinct feeling that Wine
> simply doesn't have a good reputation yet.
> To cut through this negative fog, we need more evidence
> that software vendors can succeed in the Linux market using Wine.
> So, how do we get that, if the large vendors won't budge?
>
> One way would be to focus on the other end of the spectrum:
> one-person software companies. There are so many of these
> that Wine already supports some of them reasonably well.
> I'd like to see the Wine community cultivate relationships
> with these folks, and coax a few of them to support and promote
> their apps on Linux using Wine.  This will mean a lot
> of hand-holding on our part, helping them test their apps
> and file and fix Wine bugs they expose.
>
> What's in it for us?  Lots of things:
> a) the micro-ISVs we help will be a great source of bug reports and QA
> b) some of them will turn into evangelists
> c) their success will attract the larger ISVs that we're having
> trouble with (e.g. Intuit, Macromedia, Adobe) who *will*
> be able to contribute bugfixes (by hiring contractors)
> d) they will increase the pool of apps available for desktop linux
>
> So, what am I doing about this?  Well, I'm walking through the
> lists of successful micro-isvs, trying out their apps, filing bugs
> and helping resolve them, adding AppDB entries,
> exchanging emails with micro-isvs that have expressed
> an interest in working with Wine, and updating my
> Wine for Windows ISVs page, http://kegel.com/wine/isv
>
> Like everything else associated with Wine, there's enough here to
> keep dozens of people like me busy.  I hope I can inspire
> more folks to follow my example.  If you're interested, please
> jump in!  And do consider taking part in my little isv mailing list  
> experiment,
> http://groups.google.com/group/wine-isv ; I'm going to try to use
> it as the place where I give ISVs special hand-holding.
> - Dan
>
> --
>
>
>
Good initiative,

one suggestion: avoid terms like hand-holding, it's derogatory, try
guidance. It may create a negative impact if one of the holdees gets
invovled in this list and gets the impression you're being condecending.
Could undo the good will you're trying to create.

I am not at all surprised that major companies dont want to touch Wine
with a long stick. It is only just out of alpha and the
regression/breakage pattern does not seem to be a lot more stable than it
was in alpha.

Imagine a small amateur car workshop has come up with an impressive ,
revolutionary new engine that works... most of the time, but the prototype
engines they produce sometimes just dont work. Would you expect UPS to be
interested?

Having said that , I think you idea is a good way forwards. Small
companies like that have a very fast dev. cycle . I have a fairly complex
windows app that worked well except for some fancy frame borders , I just
turned them off by default. A big co. may take 6 months to process the
idea before doing 30 mins work to make a change to the code.

It would be good to fill out the app DB a bit.

seesnz greetz.





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