Commercial Software?

[ossi]

Hi!

These days I have been wondering how Ubuntuusers would feel if there was a way for commercial software to be running in Ubuntu? Would you think it was useful to find a way to let commercial and non open-source software run on a Linux machine and give the community access to it? What do you miss most here from the commercial Software world?

How could such a solution be designed - running open and "shut" software on one Ubuntu OS? Or do you think that's just not the way to do it? Just wondering..

[zenwhen]

There is already a lot of commercial software for Ubuntu. Cedega, Nero, VMware, and Crossover Office are a few examples.

[mcduck]

For basic things I can't see any reason why I would pay for software if I can get just as good (read: often better) softs for free. But when there's no free software to do the thing it would be nice if some was at least available for money..

I know that Blender is pretty good 3D app, but it's not even close to commercial apps like 3DS MAX or Maya yet. (Lucky me, there IS Maya for Linux). For audio/music production there are some apps available for Linux, but none of those are as polished as Ableton Live, Cubase etc are so again, I'd buy these softs if I could. Gimp is very good for many things, but it still misses some features that are needed for print works, so ability to buy and run Photoshop would be nice..

Anyway, isn't that freedom too? You're free to use commercial software if you want to..