No, you cannot sue a company if they patent the idea. However, if you have prior art you can easily tell them to shove it when they sue you over violating their patent.
This is about protecting yourself against the lawsuits you risk facing for programming these days.
While it's a bit old but it seems to be rather accurate article. X is chatty as far as the actual protocol (extra abstraction layer, etc) goes, wether over local unix domain sockets or over the network, and could probably be optimized (quite) a bit.
But by now we have DGA also.
For most common applications X will be far more than good enough, for the more demanding applications you can write around the slow operations, and for those needing fantastic speed you can use direct access.
The bottom line is, you could write something better. But you'd have to make it compatible with X11, you'd have to invent your own transparent mechanism, and you'd end up with something with another layer of abstraction still running over the same X11 protocol for most applications and something more efficient for a very select few.
You already have the ability to ultraoptimize if needed, as is, today.
Compared to what you could do to improve X for the same amount of work, I doubt you'd end up more on the plus side by reinventing from scratch.
You mean Xterm? Not sure if theres any distribution that actually uses that anymore (well, its there), but compared to DOS windows not even having a scrollbar... and resizing the font when you change size on the window? Eh. Heh. Windows needs no FUD to help them along...
You're already doing without the network if you're running locally. You're using Unix domain sockets, which isnt really networking but is an IPC mechanism. A lot of applications use MIT SHM, which is shared memory areas for drawing in. Again, no networking (usually they'll fall back to network if they cant get shared memory).
MDI isnt a function of X, but of the toolkit. Gnome supports MDI fine, and you can even chose which MDI model you prefer, and I think Qt does the same thing.
Check out how X does things locally. Check out SHM. Check out GLX. That networked-application functionality isnt exactly what it sounds like when you're running on a local display server, especially not when you have applications aware of the distinction.
The common case today is that X applications are optimized for the local display server, through design and/or through the toolkits.
As consistent as Apple and Windows? You mean, basic total forced change every year or two? The MDI model of the month? The clicky icons in a toolbar at top, no, floating, no only menus, no, lets try something new... icons on the side... no lets make everything look like a browser.
Neither Apple nor (especially!) Windows are very consistent. These days they're as bad as X _ever_ was.
And it'll all get even more inconsistent. The best we can hope for is some enforced total configurability where the user at least can decide which erratic behaviour they want.
I cant really see the flaw in RedHats buisness model here...
Last I looked, the buisness model was to expand the Linux market and establish RedHat as a premium brand name for services and support in that market. Much like Evian in the bottled water market.
People pay the premium for Evian, they pay the premium for Heinz, they pay the premium for Coke or Pepsi... and they will likely pay the premium for Redhat, with associated services. You're very welcome to use HomeRolled Linux, but a lot of people will be just as leery of that as they are of JokaCola. Id say their model is progressing very well along the intended path.
True, a lot of companies running Linux will have a Unix guru. Still, at internal charges of $50 per hour, for access to that unix guru, the unix guru is likely to suggest to his boss that his time is better spent automating the fault recovery system than installing a piddly update. (we usually calculate 20 hours per year at $50 for basic system maintenance, mainly patching, per server (this is for ordinary unix buisness application servers tho, Linux would probably get away with about 10 hours.).)
People cost a lot of money.
Re:Another warning against Linux certification
on
Linuxgruven Deorbits
·
· Score: 1
Cisco is fairly good too, with a lot of practical experience needed. But the useful certifications are easily counted, I think.
We almost always conduct technical interviews separate from the HR interviews. With unskilled people it helps decide if they're easily trainable and able to study on their own without having a babysitter for 6 months (when hiring untrained people we want someone with deep and genuine interest in the field), and with the experienced ones it helps to decide what work to steer onto them when they join the company. Or even to suggest they apply for a job at some other department in the company, where we know they need people (when I got hired I actually had representatives from 3 departments at my interview).
Oh, my god, you're right! And looking around, you'll see those web developers using NT going down all around too! Oh, and CNet and Motorola, and KPMG, and aaaa, Compaq canning 5000!
Oh, and look at those proprietary office suite developers on Windows! Not to mention the filemanager developers and um... well, pretty much everyone. Its not the opensource, its computers! Computers cannot be a viable buisness model! We must stop this madness before more people start thinking that a successful buisness model can involve computers!
Or, umm... maybe most the lows can be ascribed to market slowdown, and exceptions like Linuxgruven... well, when you can put your buisness plan in front of a hundred people and fifty of them will say 'Pyramid scheme', maybe its time to think again... or start spamming Make Money Fast.
Anyone thinking they can sell opensource software and have a company based around that is an idiot. But so is anyone trying to base a company around selling proprietary mass consumer software (except for wear-out software like games), because they'll face unbeatable competition in price from opensource software and unbeatable competition in marketing from Microsoft.
Most Linux related companies realize this, and their buisness models do not include actually selling software.
Being competetive in other markets through easily adaptable low cost opensource software works (VA, most embedded systems developers, etc). But you still have to beat your competition, which means it just gives you an edge, and slacking aint gonna work.
Building a buisness around what any interested person can do in their spare time isnt going to work either. That means, dont base your buisness model around making a distribution (several distribution vendors would fall under that. Others dont; RedHat isnt in the _buisness_ of making a distribtion, Redhat uses its distribution to attain other goals). It also has some bearing for those web companies...
Services can work, but services are services. You have a good sales force/hype machine, you provide something people want, and you do it cheaper and better. Then you have a chance. Otherwise you make a small profit when times are good and you're gone when the market slows down.
Commercial viability has nothing to do with free software. Commerical viability is about having a buisness plan and free software having the right place in that buisness plan. Not as a moneymaker, but as a costsaver and a competetive platform.
Re:Another warning against Linux certification
on
Linuxgruven Deorbits
·
· Score: 1
Well, count yourself lucky because you dont want to have such an employer. If they make hiring decisions like that they wont be making other decisions very well either.
Most certifications are worthless as a measure of knowledge. I could cram-train a reasonably bright 10 year old or a semi active grandma with no computer experience until they can take an MCSE in a week, because you dont have to know anything about operating systems to pass those tests. You just need to know how to answer the questions.
The smarter employers use their technical staff to hold a technical employment interview with applicants, because while certifications are worthless someone in the field can usually cut through the BS pretty fast and get an accurate picture of the potential new employees skills and experience.
Of course, one of the main advantages of zsh is that it is rather compatible with both major shell tracks. You dont really have to 'learn' it, wether you're from the *csh or *sh track, because it will understand you fairly well either way.
Another feature that is nice is automatic sanity mode, which pretty much nullifies those times you have to stty this or that just because some vendor still hasnt gotten it right. Commandline editing and arrow keys work, whatever platform you're logging in from.
Just check the comp.sys.shells faq:). Which shell has the most features? Not that you'd ever use them all...
zsh is good if you have a HP/IBM/Sun workstation and you need a shell that will just work FOR you, and you dont have the time to spend to configure the various shells into something resembling a sane environment. It's the ultimate commandline environment.
For obvious reasons it isnt good for scripts that are to be deployed over various platforms, but then ksh is pretty much the least common denominator there. Altho considering the various vendor bugs in that you could probably just spend the time to install perl or bash across the platforms so you get a scripting language with the same bugs on all machines.
Why even burn CDs? In the best case you have network cards that are bootable off the net. Set up an install server and you just switch the computer on to install.
In the next best case you just have a floppy for the install.
This isnt Windows. It isnt essential for every user to have a CD to ensure they can do their monthly reinstalls.
Of course, it likely doesnt matter, since Unisys would sue you either way, and you'd stand a fair chance to end up in personal debt wether or not you were 'really' infringing the patent.
Software patents mean handing loaded guns to corporations who are required by law to shoot you if it may be _profitable_, not legal or 'right'. You may or may not be lucky and have a court jump in and stop the bullet, but most developer would prefer not having to watch their back for every line of code they write.
In fact, you arent. Copyright does not prevent anyone using the same plot devices.
For example, say I write a book about an asteroid knocking the moon out of orbit. If i patent that idea, nobody else can write a book about an asteroid knocking the moon out of orbit. If I copyright it, anyone can write their own book about it.
And, how do you destroy that information? When the software is running under VMware with virtual disks that you can just roll back? Or under wine emulation where you disable any writes? Or any other environment, that can trick the bejeezus out of any silly application like this? How are you going to ensure your application can really write? How does the application know it can trust the system clock?
It Will Not Work. Either you have hard encrypted material with no ability for anyone but _you_ to decrypt, or you have total control over the physical system, and those are the _only_ ways you can control what anyone does with the data.
As soon as the customer can use it, they will be able to use it any way they want, given sufficient skill (actually, in this case you wont even need much skill to crack that kind of security).
Actually, X over 28.8 has been fine for a long time, with dxpc, compressed ssh forwarding or commercial products like Go Global. At my company we have a lot of people over 64k WAN links running X applications with Go Global.
Its just that most people dont bother, since over a low bandwidth link you're never going to get good enough performance for ordinary desktop use (the added latency for clicks and graphics that cant be compressed kill the idea with or without efficient protocols). And with unix you can always use the command line, which eliminates the actual need for it in most everyday situations.
Remotable displays are great on LANs, but they can only be made less painful over low bandwidth connections.
(Oh, btw, X uses server side (desktop) drawing and bitmaps mostly even without compression.)
Actually, you can say all medicine is bogus, but you will be proven wrong. Medicine is mostly based on empirical evidence. I can claim all faith healing is bogus. Can you show me empirical evidence it isnt?
There is no real balance anymore. The cotton farming in itself is a huge imbalance that probably causes the moth population explode in itself.
The choice isnt really to 'live with the balance', because to do that we'd have to pretty much go back to caveman state again, and just accept humankind getting wiped out by the billions in disease and starvation. Until we reach a new maintainable balance where human production doesnt introduce serious issues in the environment balance.
Sooner or later we have to engineer the eco system to support humankind. There is no going back, there is only going forward until we reach a point where we have technology enough to both support humans and keep a balance.
The label of information isnt really right I think. It refers, in this case, to anything which can be duplicated at little or no cost, ie, something that many can benefit from without the original holder losing his use of it.
Basically intellectual property.
I agree tho. The time is rapidly approaching where the entire concept of intellectual property has to be revised.
The concept exists solely to further development of society and mankind through creating an incentive to create. However, copyright no longer does create that incentive in many related industries. Making money in music or litterature has little to do with authors copyright anymore. The creative people create either way (they ARENT getting the money today, but they ARE still creating - chalk that up to either some altruistic creativity or industry propaganda tricking them), and copyright serves only to maintain huge profits for media conglomerates. Not even remotely something it was supposed to do, and by now only serving to deprive humankind from arts and not serving as any incentive anymore.
The entire basis of intellectual property need to be reconsidered with the new reality of cost-free reproduction, far huger markets through cost-free transmission and far more creative people than we had 200 years ago. The creative people need to be compensated, not the media corporations.
The problem is, they get to do it for fun now, because thats the reality of the creative industries today. The creative people behind the books/albums/articles today dont get paid. Musicians get to sign contracts where they get to pay the recording, pay for the videos, and get a minor percentage of the sales. If they're lucky they can pay the company back what they end up owing.
So what is the incentive today? Copyright law isnt about the creative people anymore. Most end up not owning their own works anyway. The RIAA even tried to sneak in an amendment in recent law that would make all music works for hire.
Copyright could be completely revoked, and the artists who create today would still do it tomorrow, because there isnt any difference anymore. BECAUSE THEYRE NOT THE ONES GETTING PAID.
The only thing that would be lost are the industries forcefeeding the world with whatever poor kids theyve conned today.
What is the incentive today? Most artists would do a lot better at eating and buying a house and travelling and looking after themselves if they played a lottery. In this country we have at least a few hundred each year who make money that way... and maybe about 10 writers who can survive on their writings.
The laws, of course, are not there to protect anyone who creates something. They are there to protect those who profit from others creations. Dont even bother trying to kid yourself about that one.
Corels primary mistake was getting the idea to make a distribution at all. By the time they had that idea it didnt really matter wether or not it was any good, because there were Too Many Distributions anyway, of which most already _are_ fairly easy to use. At best the only thing another distribution would do was join the other hordes of minor distributions. Theres no money in that market, unless you have a coherent strategy other than "repackage-and-sell" (which several of the largest distribution vendors have), so they basically set themselves up to waste resources and fail (and further they managed to annoy a lot of people with semi-open licenses during testing, etc).
If they instead concentrated on making their applications work perfectly on linux (complete with easy installer for the large dists), and spent the extra energy on helping along other ease of use efforts that would be a good thing. Look at Ximian for an example.
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No, you cannot sue a company if they patent the idea. However, if you have prior art you can easily tell them to shove it when they sue you over violating their patent.
This is about protecting yourself against the lawsuits you risk facing for programming these days.
While it's a bit old but it seems to be rather accurate article. X is chatty as far as the actual protocol (extra abstraction layer, etc) goes, wether over local unix domain sockets or over the network, and could probably be optimized (quite) a bit.
But by now we have DGA also.
For most common applications X will be far more than good enough, for the more demanding applications you can write around the slow operations, and for those needing fantastic speed you can use direct access.
The bottom line is, you could write something better. But you'd have to make it compatible with X11, you'd have to invent your own transparent mechanism, and you'd end up with something with another layer of abstraction still running over the same X11 protocol for most applications and something more efficient for a very select few.
You already have the ability to ultraoptimize if needed, as is, today.
Compared to what you could do to improve X for the same amount of work, I doubt you'd end up more on the plus side by reinventing from scratch.
You mean Xterm? Not sure if theres any distribution that actually uses that anymore (well, its there), but compared to DOS windows not even having a scrollbar... and resizing the font when you change size on the window? Eh. Heh. Windows needs no FUD to help them along...
You're already doing without the network if you're running locally. You're using Unix domain sockets, which isnt really networking but is an IPC mechanism. A lot of applications use MIT SHM, which is shared memory areas for drawing in. Again, no networking (usually they'll fall back to network if they cant get shared memory).
MDI isnt a function of X, but of the toolkit. Gnome supports MDI fine, and you can even chose which MDI model you prefer, and I think Qt does the same thing.
Check out how X does things locally. Check out SHM. Check out GLX. That networked-application functionality isnt exactly what it sounds like when you're running on a local display server, especially not when you have applications aware of the distinction.
The common case today is that X applications are optimized for the local display server, through design and/or through the toolkits.
As consistent as Apple and Windows? You mean, basic total forced change every year or two? The MDI model of the month? The clicky icons in a toolbar at top, no, floating, no only menus, no, lets try something new... icons on the side... no lets make everything look like a browser.
Neither Apple nor (especially!) Windows are very consistent. These days they're as bad as X _ever_ was.
And it'll all get even more inconsistent. The best we can hope for is some enforced total configurability where the user at least can decide which erratic behaviour they want.
I cant really see the flaw in RedHats buisness model here...
Last I looked, the buisness model was to expand the Linux market and establish RedHat as a premium brand name for services and support in that market. Much like Evian in the bottled water market.
People pay the premium for Evian, they pay the premium for Heinz, they pay the premium for Coke or Pepsi... and they will likely pay the premium for Redhat, with associated services. You're very welcome to use HomeRolled Linux, but a lot of people will be just as leery of that as they are of JokaCola. Id say their model is progressing very well along the intended path.
True, a lot of companies running Linux will have a Unix guru. Still, at internal charges of $50 per hour, for access to that unix guru, the unix guru is likely to suggest to his boss that his time is better spent automating the fault recovery system than installing a piddly update. (we usually calculate 20 hours per year at $50 for basic system maintenance, mainly patching, per server (this is for ordinary unix buisness application servers tho, Linux would probably get away with about 10 hours.).)
People cost a lot of money.
Cisco is fairly good too, with a lot of practical experience needed. But the useful certifications are easily counted, I think.
We almost always conduct technical interviews separate from the HR interviews. With unskilled people it helps decide if they're easily trainable and able to study on their own without having a babysitter for 6 months (when hiring untrained people we want someone with deep and genuine interest in the field), and with the experienced ones it helps to decide what work to steer onto them when they join the company. Or even to suggest they apply for a job at some other department in the company, where we know they need people (when I got hired I actually had representatives from 3 departments at my interview).
Oh, my god, you're right! And looking around, you'll see those web developers using NT going down all around too! Oh, and CNet and Motorola, and KPMG, and aaaa, Compaq canning 5000!
Oh, and look at those proprietary office suite developers on Windows! Not to mention the filemanager developers and um... well, pretty much everyone. Its not the opensource, its computers! Computers cannot be a viable buisness model! We must stop this madness before more people start thinking that a successful buisness model can involve computers!
Or, umm... maybe most the lows can be ascribed to market slowdown, and exceptions like Linuxgruven... well, when you can put your buisness plan in front of a hundred people and fifty of them will say 'Pyramid scheme', maybe its time to think again... or start spamming Make Money Fast.
Anyone thinking they can sell opensource software and have a company based around that is an idiot. But so is anyone trying to base a company around selling proprietary mass consumer software (except for wear-out software like games), because they'll face unbeatable competition in price from opensource software and unbeatable competition in marketing from Microsoft.
Most Linux related companies realize this, and their buisness models do not include actually selling software.
Being competetive in other markets through easily adaptable low cost opensource software works (VA, most embedded systems developers, etc). But you still have to beat your competition, which means it just gives you an edge, and slacking aint gonna work.
Building a buisness around what any interested person can do in their spare time isnt going to work either. That means, dont base your buisness model around making a distribution (several distribution vendors would fall under that. Others dont; RedHat isnt in the _buisness_ of making a distribtion, Redhat uses its distribution to attain other goals). It also has some bearing for those web companies...
Services can work, but services are services. You have a good sales force/hype machine, you provide something people want, and you do it cheaper and better. Then you have a chance. Otherwise you make a small profit when times are good and you're gone when the market slows down.
Commercial viability has nothing to do with free software. Commerical viability is about having a buisness plan and free software having the right place in that buisness plan. Not as a moneymaker, but as a costsaver and a competetive platform.
Well, count yourself lucky because you dont want to have such an employer. If they make hiring decisions like that they wont be making other decisions very well either.
Most certifications are worthless as a measure of knowledge. I could cram-train a reasonably bright 10 year old or a semi active grandma with no computer experience until they can take an MCSE in a week, because you dont have to know anything about operating systems to pass those tests. You just need to know how to answer the questions.
The smarter employers use their technical staff to hold a technical employment interview with applicants, because while certifications are worthless someone in the field can usually cut through the BS pretty fast and get an accurate picture of the potential new employees skills and experience.
Ah, of course you're right, thats the one I meant. Very good links for deciding which shell to use.
Of course, one of the main advantages of zsh is that it is rather compatible with both major shell tracks. You dont really have to 'learn' it, wether you're from the *csh or *sh track, because it will understand you fairly well either way.
:). Which shell has the most features? Not that you'd ever use them all...
Another feature that is nice is automatic sanity mode, which pretty much nullifies those times you have to stty this or that just because some vendor still hasnt gotten it right. Commandline editing and arrow keys work, whatever platform you're logging in from.
Just check the comp.sys.shells faq
zsh is good if you have a HP/IBM/Sun workstation and you need a shell that will just work FOR you, and you dont have the time to spend to configure the various shells into something resembling a sane environment. It's the ultimate commandline environment.
For obvious reasons it isnt good for scripts that are to be deployed over various platforms, but then ksh is pretty much the least common denominator there. Altho considering the various vendor bugs in that you could probably just spend the time to install perl or bash across the platforms so you get a scripting language with the same bugs on all machines.
Why even burn CDs? In the best case you have network cards that are bootable off the net. Set up an install server and you just switch the computer on to install.
In the next best case you just have a floppy for the install.
This isnt Windows. It isnt essential for every user to have a CD to ensure they can do their monthly reinstalls.
Of course, it likely doesnt matter, since Unisys would sue you either way, and you'd stand a fair chance to end up in personal debt wether or not you were 'really' infringing the patent.
Software patents mean handing loaded guns to corporations who are required by law to shoot you if it may be _profitable_, not legal or 'right'. You may or may not be lucky and have a court jump in and stop the bullet, but most developer would prefer not having to watch their back for every line of code they write.
In fact, you arent. Copyright does not prevent anyone using the same plot devices.
For example, say I write a book about an asteroid knocking the moon out of orbit. If i patent that idea, nobody else can write a book about an asteroid knocking the moon out of orbit. If I copyright it, anyone can write their own book about it.
And, how do you destroy that information? When the software is running under VMware with virtual disks that you can just roll back? Or under wine emulation where you disable any writes? Or any other environment, that can trick the bejeezus out of any silly application like this? How are you going to ensure your application can really write? How does the application know it can trust the system clock?
It Will Not Work. Either you have hard encrypted material with no ability for anyone but _you_ to decrypt, or you have total control over the physical system, and those are the _only_ ways you can control what anyone does with the data.
As soon as the customer can use it, they will be able to use it any way they want, given sufficient skill (actually, in this case you wont even need much skill to crack that kind of security).
Actually, X over 28.8 has been fine for a long time, with dxpc, compressed ssh forwarding or commercial products like Go Global. At my company we have a lot of people over 64k WAN links running X applications with Go Global.
Its just that most people dont bother, since over a low bandwidth link you're never going to get good enough performance for ordinary desktop use (the added latency for clicks and graphics that cant be compressed kill the idea with or without efficient protocols). And with unix you can always use the command line, which eliminates the actual need for it in most everyday situations.
Remotable displays are great on LANs, but they can only be made less painful over low bandwidth connections.
(Oh, btw, X uses server side (desktop) drawing and bitmaps mostly even without compression.)
Actually, you can say all medicine is bogus, but you will be proven wrong. Medicine is mostly based on empirical evidence. I can claim all faith healing is bogus. Can you show me empirical evidence it isnt?
There is no real balance anymore. The cotton farming in itself is a huge imbalance that probably causes the moth population explode in itself.
The choice isnt really to 'live with the balance', because to do that we'd have to pretty much go back to caveman state again, and just accept humankind getting wiped out by the billions in disease and starvation. Until we reach a new maintainable balance where human production doesnt introduce serious issues in the environment balance.
Sooner or later we have to engineer the eco system to support humankind. There is no going back, there is only going forward until we reach a point where we have technology enough to both support humans and keep a balance.
Actually, the point is; thats what 'commercial support' is worth.
Pay loads for incompetent support that cant help you and who will then proceed to threaten to sue you if you tell anyone how bad the products are.
And if you cant switch support vendor, well, congratulations. You lose.
The label of information isnt really right I think. It refers, in this case, to anything which can be duplicated at little or no cost, ie, something that many can benefit from without the original holder losing his use of it.
Basically intellectual property.
I agree tho. The time is rapidly approaching where the entire concept of intellectual property has to be revised.
The concept exists solely to further development of society and mankind through creating an incentive to create. However, copyright no longer does create that incentive in many related industries. Making money in music or litterature has little to do with authors copyright anymore. The creative people create either way (they ARENT getting the money today, but they ARE still creating - chalk that up to either some altruistic creativity or industry propaganda tricking them), and copyright serves only to maintain huge profits for media conglomerates. Not even remotely something it was supposed to do, and by now only serving to deprive humankind from arts and not serving as any incentive anymore.
The entire basis of intellectual property need to be reconsidered with the new reality of cost-free reproduction, far huger markets through cost-free transmission and far more creative people than we had 200 years ago. The creative people need to be compensated, not the media corporations.
The problem is, they get to do it for fun now, because thats the reality of the creative industries today. The creative people behind the books/albums/articles today dont get paid. Musicians get to sign contracts where they get to pay the recording, pay for the videos, and get a minor percentage of the sales. If they're lucky they can pay the company back what they end up owing.
So what is the incentive today? Copyright law isnt about the creative people anymore. Most end up not owning their own works anyway. The RIAA even tried to sneak in an amendment in recent law that would make all music works for hire.
Copyright could be completely revoked, and the artists who create today would still do it tomorrow, because there isnt any difference anymore. BECAUSE THEYRE NOT THE ONES GETTING PAID.
The only thing that would be lost are the industries forcefeeding the world with whatever poor kids theyve conned today.
What is the incentive today? Most artists would do a lot better at eating and buying a house and travelling and looking after themselves if they played a lottery. In this country we have at least a few hundred each year who make money that way... and maybe about 10 writers who can survive on their writings.
The laws, of course, are not there to protect anyone who creates something. They are there to protect those who profit from others creations. Dont even bother trying to kid yourself about that one.
Corels primary mistake was getting the idea to make a distribution at all. By the time they had that idea it didnt really matter wether or not it was any good, because there were Too Many Distributions anyway, of which most already _are_ fairly easy to use. At best the only thing another distribution would do was join the other hordes of minor distributions. Theres no money in that market, unless you have a coherent strategy other than "repackage-and-sell" (which several of the largest distribution vendors have), so they basically set themselves up to waste resources and fail (and further they managed to annoy a lot of people with semi-open licenses during testing, etc).
If they instead concentrated on making their applications work perfectly on linux (complete with easy installer for the large dists), and spent the extra energy on helping along other ease of use efforts that would be a good thing. Look at Ximian for an example.