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Canvas 7.0 Coming To Linux!
Rockhead writes: "Just saw this over at MacWeek. It looks like Deneba will be porting Canvas, their graphics, layout and kitchen-sink program, to Linux. The free beta is expected on the Deneba Web site early next month. Whoopee!" Let's hope that the release of free-beer proprietary vector programs spurs, rather than impedes, progress on KIllustrator and Sketch, both of which look great but incomplete at this point, but hold great promise in expanding Linux's meager selection of vector-drawing tools. Canvas also has some page-layout abilities -- looks like Deneba is seeing Adobe's free FrameMaker download for Linux, and raising.
While this is a cynical interpretation, it may be that the reason companies are releasing programs free for Linux while still selling the Windows/Mac counterparts has nothing to do with building market share at all--in Linux.
It suggests, perhaps, that they don't think there's any money to be made under Linux because people won't pay for products. Given a choice between a commercial product that does 95% of what one wants and an open source product that does 50% of it, many Linux users will go for the open source product. These companies are saying, in effect, "for all the talk about free speech, you guys really want free beer," and betting that if they release something that does 70% of what you want that's closed-source but "free for non-commercial use," you'll use that.
What's the advantage of that? Chiefly, word of mouth. It's a program you may get to be familiar with, even if you end up using the open source equivalent. If Linux takes off in the business market, perhaps that "free for noncommercial use" will get them money because you'll recommend the non-free version to your boss. And, of course, if Linux doesn't take off in the business market, no big deal. They weren't planning to give away the Windows NT version anyway, were they?
The interesting question is: are they right? As people have pointed out before, Linux may be the number two server platform behind NT, but some of the commercial OSes it leads in seats are still whomping it in profits. The reason behind this is at least guessable: people are installing Linux because it's cheap. They can buy one box and put it on a hundred machines. And despite all the companies that say they're going to make money selling service (Red Hat? Linuxcare?), Linux proponents often point to the great technical support you can get for free on the net.
In other words, many of Linux's best "selling points" for users may be big gaping pits of doom when it comes to making a profit, both for Linux OS vendors and for application vendors.
Hmmm -
I have been a Canvas user for many years, well, at least up until version 5. Early on it was a nice vector drawing program, but then it got delusions of granduer. Version 5 especially. I was quite disappointed in the bugginess and bloat of version 5, so I switched to other programs. I'm glad to hear that the Linux version is going to be free beer, because I don't think I'd want to wrestle with a non-free version of Canvas again.
but not making them open source is like kissing and stabbing someone at the same time
How is it like stabbing you? If you don't want to use non-opensourced software, then don't use it, and your life will continue to be the same (as opposed to getting stabbed, where your life will be significantly worse). They haven't taken anything away from you by not opensourcing it. Do you feel that every closed-source company out there has stabbed you?
They should follow the GPL like Linux, where companies can sell as long as they open source
They are a company who's goal is to make money, if they GPL'd it, there would be five dollar cd's on cheapbytes, and they would make less money.
It would seem their support for open source is lukewarm
Their support for opensource isn't lukewarm, it's non-existant.
one should question their intentions like wise of REAL
They intend to make as much money as they can, their first step in the linux market is to gain as much marketshare as possible.
Open Source software is nice, but isn't necessary. An end user should not have to debug software. They can submit bug reports, they don't have to write patches. OpenSourcing an expensive piece of software like this is ridiculous. Notice that only the Linux version is free. The real cash machine, the Windows version, still requires payment. This isn't like GNOME or something, that people do on their free time. People go to work each day and write this code. They get paid, and millions have been invested in this code. Sure, if you don't like it, you can code it yourself. But if you want to use this, then you have to recognize that it takes money to create professional software, which is recouped when the software is sold. You don't have to use it, no one is making you. I suspect, however, that you really want to because your Open Source apps don't meet your needs. Say what you will, but I have yet to see an Open Source app that rivals its propriotory counterpart.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I got news for you. Sad news, but true.
NO COMPANY CARES ABOUT THE LINUX MOVEMENT'S IDEALS. They are all in it to make the money. Thats the whole core of a business. They could like nothing better than to be able to release only closed source, non-free apps if the Linux market would stand for it. You can't blame them. Aside for the people involved in the movement, no one really cares about the ideal behind the GPL. Why should they? A company isn't there to make life nicer for the user, if they do, thats a nice benefit, but they're in it to make money. Take nVidia. Great company. The users (aside from the Linux fundementalists) love them, they make good products at nice prices. Their primary goal, however, is not to advance accelerator technology, or make 3D a nicer experiance for the user. Their primary purpose is to make money. Sure the engineers involved probably take a great deal of pride in their work, but the company as a whole could care less. Thats life.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ha, a UNIX user talking about overhead? UNIX has the most overhead of any OS available, (aside from maybe windows and the old MacOS. Still, even NT's graphics system is a ton faster than X's) And hand holding and ease of use is not inversly proportional to power and flexibility. Take a look at BeOS. It has the overhead of a embedded system (okay, a bit of a strech, but its pretty close) and is as easy to use as a Mac. Yet it gives up very little of the flexibility of a UNIX. If you poke in, /etc is still there, you can use most Linux CLI apps. In fact, it is probably even more flexible because apps can be easily scripted. Sure you can't change the window manager, but thats about the extent of it.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
One valuable thing I can see from this is that Canvas is a somewhat major end user commmercial application entering a space that actually isn't covered too badly by free equivalents. I'd like to see how the free programs will stack up against it.
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E2 IN2 IE?
Sure. I've done fixups for various apps running on the PPC (Macintosh) platform. Every single problem I have seen falls into one of two categories:
Umm, that's three -- very funny, though I maintain that the only good Endian is a dead Endian...
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E2 IN2 IE?
They can charge you money for the software because they know you will pay for it, just like you will pay for your OS. You have no choice (or that's what you believe), and you'll do it. It's the same reason that DVDs cost more here than they do in India.
Also, to address your theme of "dying or no-loss companies" (which you posted yesterday, too), there are a lot of places that are very big on IRIX and SGI hardware (my Uni. is one of those places). I don't think that SGI is truly about to get flushed. And OF COURSE most of the companies are not risking anything big on Linux at the moment; it's new, and it's got a philosophy behind it which is strange and unusual to them, something they couldn't have imagined a few years ago. Not long ago, almost no companies were doing anything...so give it time.
Lastly, I don't really care about a "business model". Would it be nice to have all the applications for Linux that we do for Windows? Well, sort of...I wouldn't mind the audio stuff ported over, but as it stands, I can _right_now_ use GPLd software for almost all of my needs. Sure, I'd like to not ever have to worry about doing Windows tech. support any more, but thanks to the nature of GNU, I'll always go home to a great OS, whether RedHat exists tomorrow or not.
If you want proof that OSS will eventually overcome, I point to SCO as an example. Today, if you wanted a UNIX to run on x86 hardware, what would you use? Linux or *BSD, I think.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Deneba Software ... plans to offer a free Linux version of Canvas 7 ... graphics software ... [which] will work only with Linux releases designed for Intel hardware, but Deneba left the door open to a PowerPC version if there is sufficient user demand.
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However, porting the Intel version to the PowerPC shouldn't be difficult, [Peters] said, as long as the software is written in a high-level language such as C++ and limits direct interactions with hardware. Hsu said that Canvas is written in C++.
It appears that the release will not be open-sourced (to retain the competetive advantage on the profit Mac & Win versions), so does anyone want to comment on Hsu's implication that porting to PPC should be relatively easy?
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
There was another ./ story a while ago about gnucash, a quicken-like program for linux. Many of the comments touted this as the kind of thing (thing=end user apps) that linux needs more of before it can become a desktop OS. After using it for a while I got to wondering if this is really what we want. The program is great, and useful, and the interfaces are mostly intuitive for somebody like me. So then it put it to the ultimate test, my mother. It failed, miserably. But then again, she couldn't use quicken at first sight either. Also, most people probably aren't going to want to learn a new OS, but once they see the light and thing about switching, they are definetly going to be discourage by the lack of applications that they know how to use.
This brings me to my next point. While it is a good thing in terms of getting more users to have apps that people already recognize not only by brand name but by the interface, is it all that good in terms of open souce? Lets say, for example, that whoever makes quicken decides to port it to linux. I don't know this for sure, but I'm willing to bet that they won't make it open source, but will instead to something a la Adobe, and release "Limited Trial Versions". What is more important for Linux, a higher installed (desktop) user base, or 100% open source?
I have more to say, but I'm tired so I'll stop now. Please let me know what your opinions on this are.
Did anybody else notice the conspicuous difference between the Linux version of Canvas 7.0 and the Windows version? Namely, the version for Linux version will be free, and the Windows/Mac version is definately not, weighing in at $375. At first I thought it was only the beta version that was going to be free, but this is apparently not the case. According to the article, "At present, Hsu said, Deneba has no intention of charging for the software. "
It's amazing to me how companies appear to be compartmentalizing themselves. On one hand, they seem to be very interested in pursuing the free and open software movement when it comes to Linux, but when it comes to old platforms, like windows, the regular marketing rules prevail. This clearly shows that these companies are not interested in the movement behind Linux, but rather simply on capitalizing in a new market. I've got news for Deneba and other companies with Linux strategies, free and open software is good for any platform, not just Linux. In fact, free and open software is needed more on the Windows platform now than ever, if we have any hope of convincing Microsoft to consider similar behavior.
In my estimation, there are three possibilities here concerning Deneba. Either they don't understand the free software movement, or think Linux is to small a market to lose money on by giving away free software, or think Windows and Mac users are too stupid to notice that they're shelling out mucho dinero for a program that is completely free on another platform. In any case, that's no good strategy.
5. My cassette player /usr/bin/rsh humid -c /usr/local/bin/recharge -h 2 -o /bin/more coffee.hot
4. My stove, coffee machine, laundry machine
3. That darn humidifier. Imagine my crontab entry:
0 0,8,16 * * *
2. My mug:
and finally
1. My african violet:
while ($stillAlive){
open MY,"courtain" if (time() > "8:00am");
mkdir "upward";
foreach $sisterPlant (@nearby){
};
++$flowers;
$grow++;
}
To pick at nits, the actual quote is "What's our Vector, Victor?"
(Oh how I love that movie. I pray nightly for Paramount to release a 20th anniversary DVD edition.)
To remain semi-on-topic: I support a couple of Mac Canvas users at my job (version 3.5 and 5 only, as NHLBI decided not to spring for the upgrade to 7). It's a fairly decent example of the genre, and bringing it to Linux represents a Good Thing.
"Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.