Jerry,
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>ALl of your reply is great but I still have the issue of now potentially being in the position of forcing my clients to abandon their current investments. No can do. Make a second product for those who may have Linux on the desktop? Sure, you bet! Make a company switch from Windows to Linux and one of the GUI desktops and so forth? No can do. They've already spent their monies.

What 'issue'?

Sure, "they already spent their monies", several times over, and on versions of the same product!. And if Bill has his way, they will spend much more of it... even, soon it seems, to the point of paying a transaction tax (pay per use) for both ends of every transaction passing through PassPort servers. Exactly how is one's investment 'preserved' if one has to buy the essentially the same product over and over and over at increasingly higher prices? Especially when those upgrades are, more often than not, merely data tweeks to introduce incompatibilities that force the customer to 'upgrade' only because of a desktop monoply. How is a user of Win98 or Win2K going to 'preserve' their investment when they are forced to switch to WinXP?

A better path would be to persuade your clients to preserve their capital, and use that captial on their business plan, to increase their marketing, their research and development, their software (which you write!), their salaries, rather than helping some other company churn its accounts for more cash inflow.

>
We give our software away and charge for transactions. Hard to beat that price. <g>

I'm not sure what you are saying here... Are you saying you will use .NET sortware and pay Bill Gates per-use fees to write software that you will then load onto PassPort servers and which will allow you to charge a per-use-fee to your own clients in order to access the software your wrote? So, your clients end up paying Bill Gates per-use fees to access PassPort so they pay your per-use fees to use your software.

If so, I'm curious how this would work out. Is the 'per-use' going to be on a per-minute, per-hour or per-day basis. (Or maybe per-cpu cycle :) Let's assume per-day. 1600 clients access your software each day. You want 8*60 or $480/day. Each client will pay 30 cents a day to use your software. Who is going to keep track of usage? PassPort? You'll pay for that service. How will the monies change hands? ... lot's of questions...

If you wrote your software on the Linux platform you wouldn't have to give it away, as the current FUD proclaims. And charging for transactional use will give put you at an economic disadvantage if you don't own a monoply on the insurace software business. ;-)

>
>
>Guess we'll see how things shake out over the next few years...

Sooner than we might think! Don't be caught with only one platform in your toolbox! :)

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>Thanks!
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>
>>>Interesting stuff.
>>>
>>>However, let me ask a question that, if you have an answer, I'd be very interested in hearing.
>>>
>>I currently am working on (upgrading, patching, adding to) that is used by some 1600 real estate agents or associates. Probably about 1100 installs, give or take. Other than my backend stuff how in the world can I convince all these folks to simultaneously abandon their current investment?

>>
>>Well, if you don't currently have a similarly featured app already written with Kylix or KDevelop or Glade, etc..., and ready to deliver, it would be difficult! ;-)
>>
>>But, let's assume you do. I would also assume also that you don't visit each office in all the cities and states to do installs, so they do installs themselves, or with the help of local experts. Their next WinXX 'upgrade' to WinXP decision is rapidly coming upon them, or like many others, they will keep themselves frozen at W2K, or less. Of course, if they don't upgrade to WinXP and Office 2000, they won't be able to read the Office 2000 Word docs (formats tweaked specifically to force upgrades) received from others (in and out of the org) who have. That's Bill's Business Model lock-in at work. Now, they are going to have to pay close to, if not more than, a couple hundrend dollars to 'upgrade'. (BTW, are they going to be calling you when they replace or reconfigure hardware and their machine 'signature' changes, triggering a pirate flag and failure to reboot?) And, when they do, they will have essentially the same box, with the same software, a few feature tweaks, and a new,
>>nasty registration wizard. So, for them, there is no economic advantage other than paying for remaining with the 'status quo'. I don't know how much your software costs per seat, but let me toss up a figure of, say, $300. Now, you can include a SuSE 7.2 Personal Edition (no need to include a lot of stuff you don't need since it will be running your software against the PostgreSQL backend bundled with your program.
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>>So, either you eat the cost or they do. You vote they do and sell the next release for $330, but tell them that included is a single copy of Linux which can be legally installed on as many servers and workstations as they have at their location. If each office has one server and 5 workstations then they have saved over $1,000 in license fees and who can put a value on avoiding the obnoxious registration wizard grief. Your software is, essentially free.
>>

But, objectors argue, they will have to learn to work with an entirely new platform and the training expenses will more than offset the license fee savings. Really? Even if that were the case, and it is not, the training would be one time expense, while 'upgrading' is and endless treadmill built into the WinXX Business Model. However, running your software will be the same because you won't change the look and feel of it simply because it was written by a different GUI-RAD. AND, since most of KDE2's key mappings are the same as WinXX key mappings, what to learn. Point & Click is point and click. Cntrl-C & Cntrl-V is Copy&Paste, Cntrl-X & Cntrl-V is Cut&Paste. Alt-Tab switches between applications.... etc...
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>>And how would they have installed WinXX? The same way the install SuSE. Stick it in the HD, cycle the system and answer some questions about screen choices, etc., when asked. They can standardize on SO 5.2 for office work, and send documents to outside destinations by sending versions in the Word 97 format. But, some object, 'it' doesn't work like Word, or like IE... So? Even Word doesn't work like 'Word' in many respects from one version to the next. Incompatibilities between versions of MS products is legendary.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>With respect to that 'backend stuff' I currently use Rick Strahl's Web Connection with great success. Is there a Kylix version? (If not I may just want to investigate writing one <g>)
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>>Rick's WC is a great product and works well with VFP. If I remember correctly, wc.dll is written using C and is fine-tuned for forking threads and multi-cpu processing. Remove the VFP link and you have a world of choices, including you writing one that interfaces directly with your own software, much the way wc.dll works with VFP.
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>>>
>>>Ok.. So then I have to think about hooking my backend into a Linux-based database engine like Postgress or MySql. I'm now all ears.
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>>I wouldn't use MySQL, unless your backend requirements are light and easy, or your record structures don't have many parent-child relationship. For Kylix, I understand that native connections to PostgreSQL and MySQL via dbExpress already exists. So, purchase the driver component, add it to your toolbar, and when you want to add connectivity drop the TControlSource, TDataSet and TPostgreSQL controls onto your form. The syntax is very similar to that with VB and RecordSets.
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>>
>>>
>>>We also would like to provide each of these real estate agents a free email account and a virtual office. Now you've really gotten my attention. Does the free office stuff allow for this? That is, can these folks run it on their current platforms? If so, how?
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>>Free Email accounts would, of course, require that they have access to a web server that offers such tools. When I purchased a virtual website from DeZines.com (they supply Linux servers at a lower rate) I parked my domain name with them and, for my package, got 10 free email accounts. Business packages come with unlimited email accounts, and other perks. You can install your own cgi apps, xml apps, or what ever technology you wish, and based on login names, etc., connect with backends on any other web server or LAN. If you wrote it into your package you could make it all appear seamless. They fire your executable with a browser and your XML browser code pulls in data from either the server or remote sites, as need be. There is nothing magic about this stuff.
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>>>
>>>Don't misunderstand... I just need rational, common-sense types of approaches. How can I make these wonderful new technologies work in the real world? I fear that there's a lot of heat here but not enough light.....
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>>Well, each will work with what ever is most comfortable to them. It is economic advantage that moves us all, despite our 'comfort levels.' When we loose enough work to the competition we'll change either our approach or our profession.
>>
>>As far as the 'heat'... call it 'ignition' energy. You have to strike a match before it bursts into flames, or light it by its proximity to an already burning match. :-) Just remember, the tool and platform you are using now you were not using 10 years ago. All of us changed at least once, if we've been in this profession long enough, and we will all change again, if we don't retire first! :)
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>>>
>>>Thanks!