PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Question to M Hundt :
How much time for a progamming professional to finalize sfp for mac & make a version for linux ?

time is money : So if we know how much time, we know how much it would cost.

Then would it not be possible to try the following :
CW has 30000 users - If there are x% of this users who accept to pay lets say 10Euros,
then
1) this would open your product to the new Linux market
2) no more frustrated Mac-user
3) you would not loose any $ on developping this, but you would certainly make more money for selling more pulsar cards...

Just try it (wer wagt gewinnt!)

1. OSX support - this is not CWA main point now so I suppose nobody can tell you the exact date.

2. Linux? What for?
There are many reasons CWA don't touch Linux. All the reasons have been disscused here and especially on the CWA forum so have a search and you'll know why there is ni Linux support. IMHO there's no reason to go that path.

3. $10 from interested users? Utopia.
Let's face it. Even if there is a number of users interested in that area then only a limited number of them would pay $10 for the development. Aproximately 100 users IMHO.

I'm a Mac user, too.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: samplaire on 2004-03-11 06:02 ]</font>

developement on that level isn't done by people you can hire anywhere and in arbitrary numbers.
The appropriate staff just might not be available at all - or needed more urgently on a different project.
Required time can only be estimated on a very rough scale, but without skilled people such a project never ends...

cheers, Tom

In my opinion having a linux version is more contingent upon how willing Creamware is to open up access to their hardware and software code to the open source community. Usually companies of Creamware's size that do this hire 1-2 linux 'gurus' to oversee the management of that and run everything through their legal dept. to protect IP.

Unfortunately I cannot blame Creamware if they don't see opening access to be in their best interests, even with the inroads open source has made to date.

One POSITIVE aspect of this however, would be early adoption of a market which is likely to only expand. Also Creamware boards tend to orient themselves to musicians and engineers who are up to a bit of 'tinkering' to get something to work. Linux is oriented towards computer users who are much of the same ilk. So its not entirely fantasy that this would be a positive move for creamware.

The biggest NEGATIVE is somehow exposing access to their encryption for device protection.

...just a few thoughts.

IMHO supporting Linux would be stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. OSX is an essential one though. Since OSX is Linux based, maybe there is somebody out there making an OSX emulator for linux...

Well, UNIX based anyway. There are some binary compatibilities, like there are between BSD and Linux, but it's not quite the same. To my knowledge, at least the OS is java based. I'm not sure that makes it a portable enough set of java objects such that a linux based Java interpreter could make sense of it, but perhaps it's more of an issue of writing drivers that can properly speak with the hardware.

Definately not an expert on any of this, but I know enough to be dangerous.

Sam

AFAIK Linux and OSX can be brothers (or sisters ) but you can't say OSX is based on Linux (that would be an incest )

OsX is based on a particular implementation of BSD (Darwin), which is another flavor of *nix than Linux.