Looking at the guys at Hemisphere games, wow. They're serious heavyweights.
Anyways, I think I didn't phrase things very well there.
If you can pick up an extra 10%, like some game developers mentioned above, well, 10% is 10%. The only real consideration is whether you can get it there for less than that 10%. Which is pretty much determined by the size of the company/revenue.
e.g. For a company with 10 people and $1 million in revenue, it's a much more important decision than for a company with 10 people and $5 million in revenue. Resource allocation in the first case is much tighter.
For a lot of developers, they have 1 or 2 people, so the consideration is much more important and needs much more consideration.
If you have revenue of $100,000 from a product, an extra $10,000 may or may not be worth it. If you can get another platform version done in 2 months, then it's certainly worth it. If it takes you 6 months... Things are getting scary because you're messing with the food on your table at that point.
A sort of twisted inverse is also true -- not the size of the developer/revenue, but the size of the product. Very large products (code base that is) are more difficult. e.g. Could Adobe port it's Creative Suite to Linux? The complexity there is pretty much a show stopper.
I came off too quick saying, "...this is a bad argument... At the moment." The qualifications for that don't come until later.
Most developers are very small shops. Once you start going through and looking behind a lot of them, it's "a guy in a garage". It's really them that I'm talking about.
Incidentally, the last game I bought is running on Linux. Well, Android, but still Linux.
I'm currently facing the cross-platform issue and will need to decide in a couple months or so. Go truly cross platform? Cross-platform then fork? Go with independent versions? Different languages?
I've been thinking about this for a very... very... very... very... very... LLLLLLLOOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG time...
Here's an example that I've pulled out from the source code of GDT. This particular snippet was written about 4 years ago:
// F**k... Have to use the Windows API here -- no managed C# way to do this.
// For Windows Mobile, replace user32.dll with coredll.dll
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);
The first comment line is echoed everywhere I use it.
I'm hoping that I can go back and find something new to replace that though.
Still, even years ago I saw Mono and knew that it would be an answer in the future.
I like the idea of having a little conditional compilation as possible, and having the same source base. I really don't want to have a C#, C++, and Objective-C version.
I also like managed code, but will certainly use unmanaged if the case warrants it. Here's a line from the Duplicate Photo Finder I wrote for NANY 2011:
public unsafe UInt32 Hash(Byte[] dataToHash)
And it not working
in Ubuntu:
The file browsers don't work there because it's coded for the Windows file system. I've not investigated how to fix that.
But the application is very simple and already there are problems. File systems. Yuck. What a lame reason for something not to work properly... Sigh...
The number of problems that need to be solved for different platforms makes things tough.
It boils down to risk management and resource allocation (human resources and developer resources, not memory
).
I'm quite certain that Linux offers significant profit. The real question for developers is if they believe that their time investment will pay off.
You're quite right though about the market being for gamers there. It's saturated, and difficult. I know guys that do games, and they're constantly plugging away to make things work. It's hard.
With technology advances, the bar comes down though. The size of the developer/revenue is a good indication of when they'll be able to jump over the bar. e.g. For a free and open source program like Duplicate Photo Finder, the motivations for me to get a Linux version done are pretty small, and not really enough to get me to jump over that bar and do it. However, it would be an excellent exercise for me to do that I could take information away and use elsewhere. Got me thinking now... Sigh... I need to stop and get the house cleaned. It's a disaster.
In any event, it looks to me like Mono is still one of the best options. This is the year that I'll be diving in and (hopefully) swimming the icy cross-platform channel. At the moment I think I'll be starting at the end of January.
And with any luck, I may be able to get you to give me some money~!
I think I'll start on the laundry first...
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