While open source is associated with Linux, it seems that the writers of the software Songbird did not get that memo.
Songbird developers Pioneers of The Inevitable have announced that it is abandoning its Linux product in favour of its Windows and Mac versions only.
Writing in their bog, they said the decision was painful. “Some of you may wonder how a company with deep roots in Open Source could drop Linux and we want you to know it isn’t without heartache. We have a small engineering team here at Songbird, and, more than ever, must stay very focused on a narrow set of priorities.”
They are not the only ones. Sony announced on March 28th that it would be pulling Linux support from its flagship gaming product, the Play Station 3 (PS3).
While the reason is that it thinks it will cut down on movie piracy, the real reason is that maintaining the HyperVisor drivers through each firmware update was costing a bomb.
Microsoft has dropped Linux from its Enterprise Search product, although many open sourcers would have been surprised that Redmond supported the OS in the first place.
But the question might be whether cracks are starting to appear in the Linux model.
It seems that while times are good people are happy to spend a bit of time developing software that does not get much use. However, when times are a bit harder, they want to focus all their attention writing code that pays the mortgage. Linux has more or less replaced Unix on servers but the applications being looked at are more at the consumer end.
It seems that Linux is doomed to be excelled to the server box.
Er, Smartphones, embedded devices, set-top boxes, sat-navs, netbooks.......
The list goes on, and on, and on.
PS3 support is being continued as an open project. And who uses Microsoft's search product on Linux anyway, use Lucene (or a variant), its better.
Realistically (in terms of unadulterated market share figures) who uses Microsoft's search product per se. Stacked up against Google and Lucene, they are minnows.
The importance of your essential argument, that Linux isn't really fairing that well on the traditional desktop, which I would partially adhere to, depends on whether you think there will still be a market for $200 PC desktops in 10 years time.
If you look at how people access the Internet, the market share of the traditional desktop is dropping extremely fast.
I've personally seen a sharp increase in linux at the user-end, not just through my developer friends but the average user too. And as Rory points out, there are millions of mobile devices (netbooks included) which use Linux, not to mention the low-cost PCs which are being shipped around over the globe.
I think just because a few companies (even if they are large ones) drop support for linux doesn't mean that there won't be linux support in general.
From another point of view, Mac OS X (and I think the iPhone OS too) uses a derivative of Unix which has almost the same interfaces as Linux. So to develop for one, at a low level, is practically identical to developing for the other. Although I've noticed that Apple have closed/locked up a lot of their work recently, particularly on the iPhone (e.g. by restricting to Objective-C development only).... whereas Microsoft, in someways, have opened a little.
Cheers for the article Nick, interesting perspectives :-)
Daniel
* Location: Bristol, England
* Location: Bristol, England
I fully understand the sentiments at Songbird. Unless you actually run an Open Source project, it is difficult to understand that it actually functions like any other business. We are simply forced to follow the money. That is where the customers are.
We love Linux and we use it deeply in our project, but the reality of the accounting market is that 98% of the users use Windows clients. Operating systems is not our war. We have enough on our plates dealing with the big accounting vendors. It is pointless to tie one hand behind our backs when taking them on. We have to do what is best for us. RIght now that is putting the vast majority of our efforts into Windows.