I want it all, now!

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 11, 2008 at 12:26 PM

Hugh wrote:
>Let loose the gorilla and all that could change.

Perhaps; on the other hand, it could increase the size of the market, which is still marginal at best.

I believe that eventually, whatever that means, most applications will have to be cross-platform and we-aware in order to compete. The exceptions will probably be things like the calculator whose information is ephemerous anyway.

So, the protection offered by Onenote not being ported to the Mac platform won’t be there for long.

In any case, the question may be less technical and more about the economic model: how is the development of Open Source Software (OSS) applications financed? At the moment, the only viable alternative—and a powerful one- to MS Office is Open Office. Many OSS developers make money from offering support to commercial clients. Pierre has tied development of InfoQube to his consultancy fees from enterprises—I think the perspective is great, and Pierre will have nothing to loose from porting IQ to the Mac and Linux; just the contrary.

Cheers
Alexander