It's frustrating that large software vendors (Adobe, Intuit, Macromedia, IBM) aren't paying much attention to Wine, even though Wine's the quickest way for them to reach the Linux desktop market. I've been trying to figure out why they're holding back. After talking with a few large vendors and the folks working on the Munich migration project, I got the distinct feeling that Wine simply doesn't have a good reputation yet. To cut through this negative fog, we need more evidence that software vendors can succeed in the Linux market using Wine. So, how do we get that, if the large vendors won't budge?
One way would be to focus on the other end of the spectrum: one-person software companies. There are so many of these that Wine already supports some of them reasonably well. I'd like to see the Wine community cultivate relationships with these folks, and coax a few of them to support and promote their apps on Linux using Wine. This will mean a lot of hand-holding on our part, helping them test their apps and file and fix Wine bugs they expose.
What's in it for us? Lots of things: a) the micro-ISVs we help will be a great source of bug reports and QA b) some of them will turn into evangelists c) their success will attract the larger ISVs that we're having trouble with (e.g. Intuit, Macromedia, Adobe) who *will* be able to contribute bugfixes (by hiring contractors) d) they will increase the pool of apps available for desktop linux
So, what am I doing about this? Well, I'm walking through the lists of successful micro-isvs, trying out their apps, filing bugs and helping resolve them, adding AppDB entries, exchanging emails with micro-isvs that have expressed an interest in working with Wine, and updating my Wine for Windows ISVs page, http://kegel.com/wine/isv
Like everything else associated with Wine, there's enough here to keep dozens of people like me busy. I hope I can inspire more folks to follow my example. If you're interested, please jump in! And do consider taking part in my little isv mailing list experiment, http://groups.google.com/group/wine-isv ; I'm going to try to use it as the place where I give ISVs special hand-holding. - Dan
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