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Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

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191–200 of 395 posts

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#191
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that Google IMAP could mean Google Apps compatibility. And a good number of orgs use Google Apps.

Oh I know, there's just so many existing IMAP clients that I can't imagine paying for a desktop email/calendar client to work with Google Apps. Not to mention all the web based bits like Google Inbox, etc. The value proposition just isn't there with all of the free options already out there.

[deleted]

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari also has a reading mode. I would be shocked if Chrome and Edge didn't as well.

Edge does, Chrome doesn't.

Funnily enough, Chrome has a reader mode on Android but not in the desktop version. At the same time Chrome Desktop has add-ons, Chrome Android doesn't.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#193
post #72

The big thing I see missing from all this analysis is the home vs. work distinction. You have people saying "Linux users choose FLOSS because of philosophy, and proprietary software goes against this", you have users saying "I'd have tried it if it were FLOSS and I could just download it and try it", etc., but the problem is: this is a product for working with an Exchange server. How many individual users have a need…

About 95% of the work that I do is on Linux. But I run a Windows laptop. Why? Because of the Outlook Calendar. It's kind of amazing that so many tech companies run on Linux, but the Outlook Calendar just won't go away. Nearly everything else in Windows I can replicate in Linux; Excel Spreadsheets, Microsoft Word, they all have Linux equivalents. But Calendar? Nope. I've seen solutions online, and I tried them, but no…

The relevant add-ons are Lightning and Exchange Calendar

https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/lightning/

https://github.com/ExchangeCalendar/exchangecalendar/

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#194
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think 121 kb is a lot, as people nowadays demand rich media content, and even a lookup on the native Yelp app can be thus expensive.

121KB Javascript. I wasn't counting the images - the actual, rich media -, or the content itself. Once, it's fine, but this is a singe page with 121KB. Forget the in-browser cache myth: it may have been true the jquery got included directly from a cdn, but in the era of compiled JS apps, it's long gone, meaning it's 121KB JS for every medium page you visit. It climbs quickly, especially on capped smartphone data plan…

Even if the site is using a "popular" CDN, which does it use? Google? JSDeliver? Cloudflare? Unpkg? Which specific library and which of its versions? There are too many CDNs and library versions to carry the advantage of caching across different sites.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#195
post #21
post #6

I am increasingly happy to pay for software and services as long as the organization producing the software has no relationship with advertisers. I would rather pay money than use something for free that includes advertising. If there are good open-source alternatives I will always prefer those, but there are definitely some things that open-source will never be able to really make work effectively (notably anything…

Out of interest, what linux apps have you paid for?

In current use:

- 010editor

- Jetbrains Toolbox

- VMWare Workstation

- Various steam purchases

Years ago:

- Corel Office

- Crossover Office

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#196
post #2

Quite a neat insight and somewhat confirming what I think personally; Linux users largely don't use Linux for FLOSS reasons. People who do use Linux for FLOSS reasons are however rather loud. I would probably not be wrong when saying that most Linux users will happily pay a developer for the binary of an application if the dev is "doing it right". Doing it right largely involves "don't treat the customer as a walking…

> I would probably not be wrong when saying that most Linux users will happily pay a developer for the binary of an application if the dev is "doing it right". Hm, this reminds me of the Caddy, the HTTP server with Let's Encrypt integration. It's still open source, but a while ago they made the binaries paid (if you want it for free you need to compile it yourself). They got a lot hate for that; people were even accu…

And then when Let's Encrypt's certificate renewal server was down for a few hours, Caddy wasn't able to start because it required to establish a connection with LE to check the certificate and it wasn't able to determine that there was an old, still valid cert available on disk. The bug tracker on Github went wild because people were unable to bring their websites back up but the author was unwilling to acknowledge it as a bug and kept closing the issues. [1]

That was when Caddy lost all its reputation for me.

1: https://github.com/mholt/caddy/issues/1680

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#197
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that I only ever hear those complaints on HN and never elsewhere... Are you all still using Pentium 3 PCs and 56k modems?

Try using a "modern" site on a spotty 2g connection. Then realize that level of a connection is more common than you think. You never hear it elsewhere because those users just don't use your site, because they can't.

A lot of sites are even bad on a 3 or 4 megabit connection, if it's prime time and the Internet is being clogged by Netflix.

That's not a particularly uncommon speed, either. If you pay too much attention to statistics about "average" home internet speed, you're likely to be optimizing for only the top quartile, because the distribution of home Internet speeds is highly skewed.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#198
post #21
post #6

I am increasingly happy to pay for software and services as long as the organization producing the software has no relationship with advertisers. I would rather pay money than use something for free that includes advertising. If there are good open-source alternatives I will always prefer those, but there are definitely some things that open-source will never be able to really make work effectively (notably anything…

Out of interest, what linux apps have you paid for?

I pay for elementary OS and Godot Engine on Patreon.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#199
post #21
post #6

I am increasingly happy to pay for software and services as long as the organization producing the software has no relationship with advertisers. I would rather pay money than use something for free that includes advertising. If there are good open-source alternatives I will always prefer those, but there are definitely some things that open-source will never be able to really make work effectively (notably anything…

Out of interest, what linux apps have you paid for?

I used to get my distributions from Walnut Creek, then bought a few boxed editions of Mandrake and SuSE, for several years subscribed to Linux Journal since the yearly days, occasionally bought Linux magazines with CDs on them, did FSF donations a couple of times, nowadays every time I download Ubuntu I always donate donations.

Likewise on Windows apps that I use regularly like Notepad++, jAlbum, Sublime Text, Paint.NET, Thunderbird, Firefox...

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#200
post #7

I'd imagine for most Linux users (not all, of course) that they're not interested in paid proprietary products, which is why they chose Linux in the first place.

I paid a sublime text licence and a balsamiq mockup licence because they run on linux. I donate to canonical and the fsf. There is no mismatch.
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