

Proprietary Software for Ubuntu--What Will It Mean? - rainmaker23
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/proprietary-software-for-ubuntu-what-will-it-mean-1.html

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pjmlp
If it would be possible to create commercial software that could work across
multiple distributions seamlessly, there would be the need of focusing in
specific ones.

Each distribution that a vendor needs to support increases development and
technical support costs.

This is nothing new, Linux distributions are just replicating the chaos many
of us had to endure across commercial UNIX systems in the 80-90's.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Graphical applications tend to be far less portable than command-line apps
though, no?

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pjmlp
The same issue also applies to command line applications, specially because
not all UNIX systems implement the same POSIX version, with the same
behaviours.

Like any other standard, each vendor likes to implement certain parts its own
way.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
So a bit like web development then?

 _sigh_

~~~
pjmlp
yup

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jejones3141
Some of the benefits are widespread--for example, the new improved nVidia
drivers aren't tied to Ubuntu.

For the rest, proprietary software vendors should realize that supporting
multiple Linux distributions benefits them. It's good to not have a single
point of failure that Microsoft or Apple can attack.

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macco
I don't understand that, if you can run it on Ubuntu you can run it everywhere
else. Maybe you have change packaging a bit, but this is nonsense
conversation. We should be glad that Ubuntu is gaining traction.

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mistercow
I expect what will happen, if this becomes a major advantage of Ubuntu over
other distros, is that projects will surface to create a sort of emulated
Ubuntu sandbox for proprietary software targeted at Ubuntu. It will be sort of
like Wine, except that it will work way better.

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technomancy
Installing proprietary software without my consent was actually the main
reason I ditched Ubuntu for Debian.

