Agreed... I used Interchange to set up an ecommerce site for my employer (www.yoursole.com) back in 2002. Since then it has become our internal wholesale order entry interface, tied together our accounting system and CRM software, and become our business reporting suite and warehouse application.
Unfortunately, the reasons why it is so powerful are the same reasons why it has a high learning curve and a lot of people get turned off of using it.
imo, a killer app provides the user with something - functionality, usability, or just a feeling of absolute joy - that they can't find anywhere else. It isn't simply an app that's popular on a certain platform. For me, kde is a killer app. I can't really put my finger on any particular functionality that causes it to be my killer app, but it gives me a great feeling using it, which I know I can't find using any other desktop environment. It is what keeps me using linux (yes i know you can run kde on a mac or windows, but it's definitely not the same.). But would people switch to linux because of it? that is the true test of a killer app.
I'm wondering if maybe kde might be or might become the killer app for Linux? I know that anyone who happens to glance at my 3.2 desktop always asks, "Wow, what's that?". It's no longer, "Hey is that a mac?" or "How did you get XP to look like that?". I think KDE has something going that no other desktop has. It has features that are all it's own, that aren't simply attempts at copying features of other desktops.
Many, if not most, of these "features" are designed to lock you in to their product.
I would also add that most of these "features" are hardly necessary at all. I came onto the dbms scene just 2 years ago and was only exposed to mysql and pgsql at the start. As I am being exposed to Oracle and DB2, I find I am asking myself over and over again "so why would I pay thousands of dollars for this?" I guess my point is that if you come from the perspective of using Oracle for years and then are exposed to some of the Open Source alternatives, you see all the things that are lacking, whereas if you come at it from the other perspective you see all the useless "features" that you are paying gobs of money for.
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And since it's written in perl it supports whatever database you can access with DBI.
Agreed... I used Interchange to set up an ecommerce site for my employer (www.yoursole.com) back in 2002. Since then it has become our internal wholesale order entry interface, tied together our accounting system and CRM software, and become our business reporting suite and warehouse application.
Unfortunately, the reasons why it is so powerful are the same reasons why it has a high learning curve and a lot of people get turned off of using it.
imo, a killer app provides the user with something - functionality, usability, or just a feeling of absolute joy - that they can't find anywhere else. It isn't simply an app that's popular on a certain platform. For me, kde is a killer app. I can't really put my finger on any particular functionality that causes it to be my killer app, but it gives me a great feeling using it, which I know I can't find using any other desktop environment. It is what keeps me using linux (yes i know you can run kde on a mac or windows, but it's definitely not the same.). But would people switch to linux because of it? that is the true test of a killer app.
I'm wondering if maybe kde might be or might become the killer app for Linux? I know that anyone who happens to glance at my 3.2 desktop always asks, "Wow, what's that?". It's no longer, "Hey is that a mac?" or "How did you get XP to look like that?". I think KDE has something going that no other desktop has. It has features that are all it's own, that aren't simply attempts at copying features of other desktops.
Many, if not most, of these "features" are designed to lock you in to their product.
I would also add that most of these "features" are hardly necessary at all. I came onto the dbms scene just 2 years ago and was only exposed to mysql and pgsql at the start. As I am being exposed to Oracle and DB2, I find I am asking myself over and over again "so why would I pay thousands of dollars for this?" I guess my point is that if you come from the perspective of using Oracle for years and then are exposed to some of the Open Source alternatives, you see all the things that are lacking, whereas if you come at it from the other perspective you see all the useless "features" that you are paying gobs of money for.