Economic considerations (was: up with PyGUI!)

[Cameron Laird]

In article <1gk5wxv.1rnwtamytx5m5N%aleaxit at yahoo.com>,
Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Jorge Godoy <godoy at ieee.org> wrote:
>   ...
>> > On a Mac it looks like anything else does on a Mac, and
>> > on Linux or Windows it (currently) looks like anything
>> > else that uses Gtk.
>> 
>> I'm not familiar with the looks on Macs...  But I remember something of
>> it, from the last visit to a store that has some of these here
>> (I remember specially the design of the computers, the look of the
>> applications seemed very interesting, but KDE is approaching it very
>> fast, IMHO).
>
>IMNSHO, nope -- I'm quite a fan of KDE, but I discovered Macs 9 months
>ago and immediately fell in love with MacOSX's "Aqua" user interface
>look and feel.  These days I use a Mac for everything I can possibly use
>one for, even though I mostly program for Linux (and a little Windows).
>
>> I really would like a lot if it was possible to write
>> non-GPL code with Qt (not that I'm against GPL software, but some
>
>It's perfectly possible: Trolltech, the authors of Qt, will be extremely
>happy to sell you a commercial license of Qt so you can develop and sell
>your code as closed-source or whatever.
>
>
>> > As far as I can remember, I drew them with Appleworks 6,
>> > printed them to PDF files, opened them with Preview and
>> > then saved them as jpegs. (Photoshop might also have been
>> > involved in there somewhere, I don't recall now.)
>> 
>> Too bad these aren't tools available on Linux or FreeBSD...  I really
>> liked the way they look :-)
>
>Me too (well, not Photoshop, actually -- if I had to process images I
>think I'd use GIMP instead), so I use them on my Mac iBook 12" laptop
>(whose operating system's guts aren't all that far from FreeBSD --
>there's some Mach microkernel involved, but it's very unlikely that
>could possibly be a problem -- those guts are all opensource, too, under
>the name of 'Darwin').
			.
			.
			.
Me, too, Alex; that is, while I'm sitting in a room with, um, four
x86-based hosts, and my follow-up edit image is on a Linux host a
thousand kilometers away, I'm typing on a MacOS portable.  I can't
imagine ever again buying a Windows machine, although that's where
most of my deliveries are.

Something certainly is frustrating, though, at least, in regard to
Apple prices in Brazil and elsewhere.  I've threatened a few times
to start a business importing used boxes to precisely that country.
MacOS is so valuable now, and the prices for it there, specifically,
so aberrant, that *something* is wrong.  It sure would be a pleasure
to be able to help make useful computing more affordable.

I utterly agree with your comment elsewhere that a simple-minded
comparative-advantage calculation calls into question the current
habit that third-world body shops aspire to write custom software
for the first-world rich.  "One step at a time" is all I can think
to say.

Incidentally, my expert sources emphasize to me that GIMP still
has a long way to go before it effectively rivals Photoshop.