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Novell to port Evolution to Windows

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the good-for-them dept.

Gladiat0r writes "Nat Friedman blogged on Planet Gnome today that Novell has hired Tor Lillqvist (of Gimp for Windows fame) to help Fredrik Hedberg port Beagle to Windows, and after that his main task is to port Evolution to Windows."

9 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. How nice... by forceflow2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure, take all the nice Linux applications over to Windows...don't worry about porting the nice Windows apps over to Linux though. Nope, we're fine...We'll just run them at half speed with WINE or something...

    1. Re:How nice... by jellocat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure, take all the nice Linux applications over to Windows...don't worry about porting the nice Windows apps over to Linux though. Nope, we're fine...We'll just run them at half speed with WINE or something...

      Actually, this is how you get Windows apps to run on Linux.

      1. Port leading OSS stuff over to Windows. If it's quality, you will likely have some adoption.

      2. After enough people are using Evolution or another opensource app, some systems will likely be converted to Linux. Maybe in some pockets here and there, maybe more later.

      Example: "Well boss, this business unit(s) only use web, office, and email. We are already using the Windows ports of these core apps, we should look into Linux during our next hardware/OS upgrade. We can run the same apps on a better OS"

      3. With enough people/businesses running Linux, Windows applications will not be able to ignore the value in porting their app to Linux.

      Example: "Well Mr. Vendor, we really like your app, but it needs to run on Linux too at our company. I can buy if you can run on both."

      So, what does the market share need to be 5%, 10%...I don't know. But this is how you get in.

  2. Re:Well, great. Or is it? by yetdog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it's all about weaning off of MS. Let's face it - a cold turkey jump to OSS is damn difficult for any company. But if you start working in OSS projects into the current platform, when you start migrating the users, the transition will be that less invasive.

  3. Good news for GTK+ on Win32 by biwillia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is great news for GTK+ on Win32, which has always suffered speed and look-and-feel problems on the win32 platform. When a big application like Evolution gets ported from one platform to another, the base libraries such as libgtk, pango, and the like can only benefit. I look forward to the speed improvements and bug fixes in the win32 versions of gtk. This should really bolster the cross-platform nature of gtk.

  4. Great for Openoffice, etc by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the strongest reasons Microsoft is putting in the table when comparing Office vs Open source alternatives is the availability of Outlook. We've Openoffice, we've firefox, we've thunderbird, but we didn't have a Outlook alternative.

    That was certainly stopping many people from switching to Openoffice. With Evolution ported to windows, it's no longer the case, and having the exchange connector even more. Nice news.

  5. Lowered Activation Barrier by 4of12 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    • Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
    • OpenOffice.org instead of Office
    • Evolution instead of Outlook
    When Windows users can easily move w/o doing any "scary" OS change and try out open source applications "risk free", they'll be more likely to try.

    The last, most significant jump will be made smaller and easier, after new users become comfortable with that suite of applications.

    Namely, Linux instead of Windows.

    Which is down where an OS should be; a standard commodity, interchangeable, free, stable and not full of Innovations® like HTML renderers, special codec media players.

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  6. We need more of this! by adolfojp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If people use Windows apps at work, and can't use them back at home on their Linux boxes, they will just stick with Windows.

    If people can use the same apps at work and at home on Windows and on Linux, full migration can be done.

    Cheers,
    Adolfo

  7. Re:Well, great. Or is it? by 0racle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought it was about providing good software. If the only reason to use Linux and GPL software is to 'stick it to the man,' I'm going to use something else.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  8. Open Source and cross platforms.... by Maxim+Kovalenko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (Your probably gonna mod this as flamebait for me saying this) Make no mistake about it, cross platform applications are good for the open source movement. They spread awareness of how good Open Source can be, and give people a viable free (as in beer, as in choice) alternative. However, people crying about how certain applications should only stay on "certain" operating systems are hypocrites. This is supposed to be about freedom of choice, right? This isn't supposed to be about the freedom to only work on a "particular, politically correct, operating system."

    --
    Requiem