[PLUG] Make some tax software...

[Russell Johnson]

On Apr 16, 2009, at 1:09 AM, donkyhotay wrote:

> I'll accept
> the fact that many companies aren't interested in the linux market and
> don't bother making stuff for linux, but when you have something that
> *is* compatible with linux and you go out of your way to try to make  
> it
> incompatible (and fail at that even), well... it becomes time for me  
> to
> look for another tax service (online or not) which I did this year.


Consider this:

When marketing a product, testing costs. Each browser, OS, version,  
locale, etc. is another permutation which requires a full test suite  
pass. One of the problems (from one perspective) linux has at the  
moment that does not plaque Windows nor OS X is that each distribution  
is considered a different OS. In general people making the decisions  
don't see 'Linux Compatible' the same as Redhat Compatible, or Debian  
Compatible.

When I worked at a software company that marketed products on Windows  
and *nix, we tested on both Redhat and SuSE, and then still had  
customers who would not buy unless we stated it was also tested on the  
distribution they ran.

So, when it comes down to dollars, they test on the combination that  
they can afford to test on. To state it works on Linux when it hasn't  
been tested on it, would be a lie, and easy to prove. Intuit is a for  
profit company, and if they can't prove the return on investment, they  
have to do something. Unfortunately, it appears they chose to cut  
support.


Russell Johnson
russj at dimstar.net