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View Full Version : Is Linux too friendly for it's own good?



BlackRoijaX
July 9th, 2009, 04:55 PM
The fact that CodeWeaver's host Wine on their servers has made me think. Is Linux a little too friendly. Isn't hosting a direct FREE competitor to your product on your servers a little suicidal? Let alone a slighly questionable business model.

I'm aware that Linux is all about openness and sharing, but still...

lykwydchykyn
July 9th, 2009, 05:03 PM
Wine is not a competitor to codeweavers. Crossover is built on WINE and codeweavers contributes to its development. They offer a certain amount of "value-add" to wine that people are willing to pay for.

More or less, their business model is kind of a small variation on the support model. You can look at it as them offering a "supported" version of Wine for people who need or want that.

As a comparison, look at StarOffice/OpenOffice. Sun facilitates the development of OpenOffice, then builds StarOffice from it by adding a few features and offering support. Interest and enthusiasm for OpenOffice creates a market for StarOffice that it otherwise wouldn't have, not to mention it saves them a load in R&D costs.

cph05a
July 9th, 2009, 05:08 PM
Codeweavers works with Wine. They are the largest commercial supporter and (please correct me if I'm wrong) Crossover is built on wine. I think the whole point behind Crossover was to have an alternative to the wine headache by having a product which sets up popular applications for you. Codeweavers seems to care about linux users as they offer generous educational discounts and have even given crossover away for free in the past.

As for their business model being suicidal, I don't think so (Although I don't think they'll be millionaires, ether). Crossover does solve the wine headache pretty well, and is especially nice for users who are still new to linux.