[clug] retail software

[Ian Bardsley]

Hi David

I think that there probably is a small market for retail packaged 
software written for the linux platform but only where there are gaps in 
the availability of functional FOSS software. For example, in the area 
of video processing software, linux is quite weak and although there are 
a myriad of FOSS packages out there that will enable a user to do 
anything they want they are in general incomplete and/or badly 
documented and a user needs to use avariety of tools to achieve an outcome.

I recently wanted to send a brief video message to some former army 
comrades attending a re-union in the UK that I was unable to attend in 
person. To achieve this, I ended up using 5 different FOSS packages and 
spent several hours to cobble together a 3 minute clip with an 
introduction, some background music, my video message and a couple of 
still images and convert the whole lot into .WMV format that my post 60 
yo comrades would be able to view using Media Player on a notebook.

Had I been able to go to "Hardly Normal" or somewhere and buy a 
comprehensive piece of software say like VideoStudio that would run on 
my linux only PCs, I would have done.

FOSS software works for me in 99% of cases and I don't find mainstream 
FOSS apps difficult to use. The only thing that I see with commercial 
software is that in general, the GUI is prettier than the open source 
alternative but for my level of usage, I dont see any functionality 
differences, you just adapt.

HIH

David Cottrill wrote:
> I work for a retail software company that is rapidly porting all its
> Windows/Mac programs to Linux.
> The programs cover pretty much the entire spectrum of applications - from
> Asterisk to Audacity to VLC.
>
> What I've been wondering is: how many of you would be willing to install
> such things. As a rule the software is far easier to use than the standard
> open source alternative and with only a few (significant) exceptions it
> works better.
>
> David
>   


-- 

*Ian Bardsley*


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