On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Frank Warren wrote:

> I'm going to snip the stuff about how BSD has enough apps.  They are paltry
> compared to Windows apps.

Certainly you can start counting apps and reach a big number on Win32.
But I think people's thirst for apps has changed a lot.  I used to have an
``app'' that did nothing but execute a command line after replacing some
special 3-letter sequence with the current Julian day number.  This is not
an ``app'' any more, and doesn't deserve to be counted.

I think if you look closely at the market for ``apps'', you'll find that
it doesn't exist.  today, people want:
 o an office suite
 o a web browser
 o games

BSD, at least for i386 (and possibly SPARC) has the first two nailed.  We
are in a sad state as far as the third goes, but optimistically the game
market is incredibly volatile, and favours portable code with minimal
loyalty to anyone.  Things could change quickly here, especially given
HDTV and game consoles with Ethernet.

People have finally realized that software which promises to each your
children to count is utterly worthless.  The web is sufficiently
distracting to numb any desire for odd programs that run locally.  These
days people want just a few large programs, not an incredible array of
small ones.  Computers are disturbingly generic and universal.  The idea
that one platform having more programs than another is becoming
progressively more absurd.  The question becomes more like, ``well, is it
finished yet?  does it run The App?''

Granted, there are a number of little appschens that perform trifling
Internet-related duties, but there are certainly as many or more of these
in the Unix community, or even in pkgsrc, than there are among the Wintel
camp, and most of the Wintel appschens are irrelevant on Unix--for
example, how many Win32 ``ftp servers?'' How many ``terminal emulators''
are there for Win32 that replace telnet-inside-an-xterm with varying
levels of failure?  I can think of at least five.  I think any free Unix
wins in this department.  The appschen future of Unix is secure, given
that the people who write these little programs are jumping en masse
toward Linux/GNOME, which is just as good for us as if they were jumping
toward NetBSD/GNOME. And, as I said, there's not much app action outside
this department--just a few Big Ones.

If there is any place where we lose (besides games), it's in the
insanity-explosion of the USB Toys market.  ex. that Intel microscope
thing?  why would anyone want to plug a microscope into a computer?  we
are not talking about some fancy confocal 2-photon 3D fancy-physics
microscope--it's plasticlens brightfield junk.  but, it only works with
Windows.  Still, we do support quite a few USB toys!

I don't think businesses buy much besides Office and Oracle.  The point
is, I don't think people buy software any more, except for games.  They
just steal Office from work, and download new versions of Netscape and AOL
client.  If they go out to buy stuff, it's USB toys.

Lack of apps truly, honestly does not concern me.  Unix has better office
suites and Internet appschens than Wintel now, and I expect this to
continue.

What concerns me is the consistently second-class treatment that notWinTel
gets from Netscape and Sun.  Netscape is still punishing me with a 4-point
font size that i am utterly convinced is a deliberate conspiracy.  Sun is
feverishly making Java RE's as complicated and difficult to port as
possible.

The other problem I have is that ``we support Linux'' means Linux/i386.  I
have only sparc, alpha, macppc plausibly available, so i'm left out of all
the fun, COMPAT_ or not.

If it weren't for the Java thing, i'd say we should look into designing
and advocating some Java classes based on our USB stuff.  But who cares
about Java at the moment, since it is so much less portable than C and
GNOME?

-- 
Miles Nordin / v:1-888-857-2723 fax:+1 530 579-8680
555 Bryant Street PMB 182 / Palo Alto, CA 94301-1700 / US