Help Porting Our TomeRaider to Ubuntu (Scott Dier)

[Jan Claeys]

Op do, 29-06-2006 te 08:02 +0100, schreef Mat Ripley:
> We don't really mind if TomeRaider comes out on other flavors of Linux
> than Ubuntu. I just feel that for Linux to take of in a meaningful
> sense there needs to be some unity behind a distribution, and Ubuntu
> seems totally the one for that:) 

And nothing prevents you from officially supporting only one or a small
number of distributions.

> What we don't want is to lose revenue from our Windows and Handheld
> sales of TomeRaider.

Like people already told you: no open source license can prevent anyone
from replacing the "Linux GUI" by a "Windows GUI", but that probably
isn't even necessary: both GTK & Qt are available for Windows too, so
porting the open source version to Windows might be easier than you
think now...

There are also options to (try to) make money in different ways than you
do now:

      * Make the program partially open source, e.g. by making the
        export-to-handheld stuff a commercial plugin (which doesn't
        prevent anyone from writing an open source plugin but it will
        take time, and probably with your experience you can offer one
        with better quality).
      * Charge people for access to (parts of) the e-book library.


> We have done lots of freeware over the years but never any OS so its
> all new territory. I hope that our absolute willingness to say "The
> Ubuntu dev comunity can have this code, app and the thousands of
> Tomeraider reference works and ebooks for nothing and we will help as
> much as we can on any level" wont be hampered because of an excessive
> purism that responds "Thats great, but you must also make it OS on
> Windows" :) 

I would suggest you talk to some people who took a decision like that
before (e.g. Xara Ltd.).  Talking to people who considered but decided
against might be good too, but of course they aren't as easy to find.

Also, are those e-books protected by DRM?  Open Source and DRM don't
work well together, as you probably know...


PS: I see you did some small open source apps for Windows, so it's not
_entirely_ new territory...   ;-)


-- 
Jan Claeys