REALbasic for Linux in the works

Posted on July 23, 2003
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 29 views |

REAL Software has announced that they’ll be adding Linux compilation support into REALbasic 5.5 (due in the beginning of 2004). That’s interesting, and probably easy for them to do since they already compile for the FreeBSD-based OS X (and certainly easier than the Windows compilation must have been), but IMHO not particularly useful to most REALbasic developers in the long run.

“Why?” you may ask, if you happen to care at all. Two reasons:

1. Linux already has an incredible wealth of software, the vast majority of which is both open-sourced and free. Open-sourced is the very ethos upon which the Linux world is built and free is pretty damned attractive to the user shopping about. Mac software developers generally release their software closed-source and for a shareware fee (don’t believe me? check out the number of Linux vs. Mac OS projects on SourceForge). Mac users tend to be amenable to paying for shareware, Linux users like their freeware. It’s hard to ship both at the same time.

2. The Linux world is still the arena of the geek, the desk-dweller who enjoys sticking her fingers into the guts of her machine at the command-line level and poking about with reckless abandon. Most Linux users I know are just as quick to pop up the command line to use a util as they are to double-click an icon. This doesn’t really mesh with the world of REALbasic-built apps and utils, which tend towards the simplistic in functionality* and rely on their user-friendly UI as a major selling point. I just don’t see REALbasic-made apps being appealing enough functionality-wise to warrant their notice.

I hope this move generates more revenue for REAL Software, who have developed an incredible IDE that I’m really quite fond of. But as a developer, this doesn’t do anything for me.

* Settle down y’all. There are some fantastic apps made with REALbasic. It just happens to be that REALbasic’s relatively soft barrier to entry means that a lot of simple, less-than-useful apps that should have stayed on people’s machines as their learner’s projects get made and released. As proof head on over to Version Tracker and search for “image viewer” :-)

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