 It is I, Jack Wallin, with my partner in crime, Swasho. So cool, Partia. Hello. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you? I just came back from two back-to-back events, open source leadership summit and open IFT summit, and I'm tired. So I'm not going to the next week's open networking summit. It's too much. I bet it was crazy, wasn't it? Yeah. I did, like, how much? At open networking summit, I did, like, 21 interviews, video interviews. And at open IFT summit, initially I went there just with one interview, and then I ended up interviewing 12 people, including the founder of Arduino project. I just saw him at the keynote, and I talked, and we just got that interview. And it was, like, I think 45-minute long interview. Wow. And, yeah, it was amazing, you know, to talk to all these open source leaders. Just incredible. I mean, the beauty is that almost everybody is using open source. I was talking to Nitera from Comcast, and the point was that nowadays you don't talk about who is using open source. You can say, who is not using it, and why not? Right, exactly. And, of course, a lot of times when you're talking about who's not using open source, on that level it's mostly enterprise, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we just have to, I keep waiting for that trickle down from enterprise down to the end user, and it's slow. But I think that also, yeah, please go ahead. I think that's one of the reasons why we have such a good topic today. Exactly. That's a good transition from there. And what is the topic? The topic is why are vendors not porting to Linux? Yeah. And it's been a hot topic for a very, very long time. How many of the 20 years that I have been using Linux, one of the most popular questions that I ever get asked is why is there not a Photoshop for Linux? Yeah, because Linux users don't need Photoshop. They are happy with GIMP, right? Yes. And you know, the thing is, and you and I have discussed this, we've said this a number of times, there are tools in Linux that can suffice. To a certain level. And once you start getting into, and I'm not deriding or derailing Linux at all because I use Linux. Look back there, my workstation is elementary OS. Linux has been my primary desktop distribution for 20 years. So I say this with all due respect and love. But once you get above a certain level with your applications, things start to go off the rails. And when you hit that, all of a sudden you're facing, you're on a precipice and that precipice is do I continue struggling with this Linux application or do I adopt a different platform for that specific application, which I've talked about already a number of times, which I have done. Right. We want to talk today about why vendors aren't porting to Linux. Now this discussion came about from some comments from our last discussion. And I think it's because there were so many comments with regards to this, I think it's an important topic. Right. The only thing I would like to say there is like when you were kind of defending yourself, I have seen some YouTube commenters, I don't want to name them, but they try to claim that they own the community. That kind of, you know, the same trend you see in America, you know, take the country back. They say, you know, we Linux, no, there is no V. Sorry, there's no I here. You don't own the community. You don't say that, hey, you know what, I'm the Linux users. You're not. It's like humans. And sometimes we criticize humans for all the atrocious crime that we commit either through towards animals or as Americans, we criticize ourselves because a lot of things that doesn't make us, that we are not humans. So when we criticize something that is not right in the Linux desktop world, that doesn't mean we are saying something against them. Because the thing is, I am part of that community. I am actually, I think you and I have actually, because my career is started in 2005 when I completed my journalism, my job was with Linux open source. So I have built my career around open source and Linux. And you are even, you know, you predate me. So we have actually contributed more to Linux, to the growth of Linux than any other people. So nobody has a right to question me or to question you. When we talk about it, we talk about fixing things which is wrong or which is not that good at this moment. So I just wanted to set that clear so that there's no us versus them. Yes, and this criticism comes from a place of respect with the hopes that developers would listen and we could help to improve the software. And that's been my case for decades as a tech writer. I don't, I don't criticize, and I don't go out of my way to criticize things. In fact, I go out of my way to praise Linux software. But when I do criticize something, I do it in such a way to say, this is what the software needs from my perspective. It's not to say that this is what the developers are doing wrong. Because I don't think they're doing anything wrong. No. At all. I think that there, there are a lot of times they run up against limitations. You have, you have software standards that aren't being followed by the de facto standard software application and, or you have hardware limitations. And so we, I've always been that way. I've always criticized, when I do have to criticize something, it's always been in such a way that with the hopes that it would help the developers understand from a user's perspective. Because it's really easy to understand things from a developer's perspective. But sometimes develop, there's a disconnect between developers and users that I think that we need to bridge. I mean, you're right. Yeah. So please go ahead. And I think that there are a lot of reasons why large developers like Adobe and Microsoft aren't porting their software to Linux. And I can think of two, two very specific reasons that I think have a death grip on those vendors. And I want to, I want to, I'll go into my little, my little story, I want to let you chime in here, but then I'll go into my little story. Yeah. I think, I would like to just say two things about criticism. If you look at any of the, whether you're like historians or economists, you know, they don't just write praise about economy. You know, they also warn you what's wrong, what you should fix. That's how intellectuals work, you know. Intellectualism is not a marketing machine to praise you. That's number one. Number two is that when you mention all these vendors, one thing before we kind of discuss this is that it really doesn't matter whether you need it or not. As a platform, somebody may need it. So when we think about desktop, whether it's Mac OS, Windows, or Linux, it should work. The primary goal is as a platform, it should enable users to run whatever they want to run and developers to target their users. The platform itself should not become the message that, you know, we only support and run open source. That means you're not a platform anymore. You are just another message. That's one thing. And second thing is that you mentioned was that developers need feedback. I think what happens is that you're right that, you know, it's not that developer doesn't want to develop that or don't want. The thing is, I think sometimes what happens in certain communities or because of the way our Linux communities work, there are eco chambers. You know, you live in the same eco chamber and so you keep hearing the same thoughts, same opinions over and over again. So you're never exposed to the external world. Okay, this is a stupid example, but I'm telling you, like for example, when I was open SLS, I used three cameras to record my videos. So there are three cameras. One is wide angle. One is focusing on me. One is focusing on the interview. Now you imagine three timelines because you also do video editing and you know, multiple like four tracks for audio. Now what I needed was like, okay, there are shots. So they're like layered on top of each other. So traditionally what I do is I cut those shots. I, you know, I make a timeline which is like invisible so I drag and drop those footage. Now on Adobe, I was watching Peter McKinnon and there is a setup called MultiCam. So what you do is you click on the MultiCam button, drag all the clips there and then it creates one big window which all the camera listed and every camera gets a keyboard shortcut one, two, three, four, five. So you want to see the camera one click on one and it will be, so you can easily switch between camera. So the thing is as a filmmaker, it saves me a lot of time. It gives me much more control to kind of easily create the experience and product that I want versus struggling with it. So sometimes users need those features. I posted this message on Google Plus and somebody say, hey, you know, it's that, you know, shot, whatever you call it, Cadian Live and a lot of people because there are so many. I have not, only thing I have used is Cadian Live because that was the most perfect. So I said, no, the whole point of me sharing this is not to demand Cadian Live or OpenShot is but to share my experience because those developers may have not experienced it because all the Linux users, they never tried it will be so they didn't know that there was a feature like that. So it's very important to share your feedback. Right. And you know, and the community should look at it is positively to learn something from it. If you look at the GNOME desktop, they have borrowed almost all of their ideas from either iOS or macOS. Yeah. You know, we are humans. So yeah, so I think that I just wanted that, that thing to be clear before we kind of type about why vendors should support us. Right. When you get to a certain level using a product, whether it be writing software or film a video editing software, when you get to a certain level and you're doing this professionally and you're doing it repeatedly, you need software that's going to make it easy for you. It's going to make it efficient, make the workflow in the process efficient because you can't waste valuable time during your day to have to overcome hurdles. So, and that's one of the reasons why I had to give up using OpenShot because I was constantly facing crashes and the animated titles no longer worked properly. And I was at a point where I was doing, you know, three, four videos a day. And I finally said, I can't work like this. I have to have a tool that I can depend upon and will make the creation of these, the editing of these videos will make it simple, not necessarily easy, but make it efficient because my time is valuable. And I think, and maybe that's, it could be an age thing, you know, because I'm 50 years old and my time is incredibly valuable to me and I need to be able to get as much done as possible during the day. And if that means that I have to use Final Cut Pro over OpenShot, then so be it. It's helping me get my job done. Now, I want to talk about, I want to tell a little story about this whole idea of vendors porting software to Linux. Can I interrupt you for just one second? Sure, sure, sure. Of course. Okay, when you mentioned this, you know that I need to get a job done from what I'm assuming you're creating some videos for yourself but let's assume that you are also working for XYZ open source company where they want you to create some videos for them, right? And you are charging them by hours. So to create the five minute video, you will end up working for six or seven hours and you'll charge them for seven hours to create the same video. Whereas you're also wasting your time because you know that you are not efficient and you're expensive. Whereas if you have the right tools, you can deliver the same product in one hour. So we have also considered that because if you don't have the right tools, it's not about convenience. It's also about making everything more cost-effective and efficient. That makes me think of something and I think that it will help people to understand on this level. If you look at the landscape of Linux applications, some of the best applications available are developer tools because developers know what we're talking about. They know they need to work efficiently. They know they need to work reliably. And so they have spent the time and effort to make sure that the tools that they use work perfectly. And those are the best tools ever. Yeah, that's the thing. Linux IDE tools and Linux development tools are the best. And that is the reason why even those, all those when I go to open source conferences, people use Mac OS, but they are using all those open source tools because these are the best tools. Why? Because users, actual users are directly involved in the process of creating the tool or influencing that. At that level, what happens is the developers also become the users. So they get in their own little feedback loop and they can make sure that their tools are ideal. What we need, what end users need are developers that are also using those tools that they're creating on the same level, like the developers of OpenShot. We need, those developers need to be, and I'm not, the developers of OpenShot, they do a great job. Oh yeah. And I'll be straight up honest here. When people come to me and they say, I need a video editor that's really easy to use. And one of the first things I say is are you using Mac? Are you using PCS? Mac, you can use iMovie. But if you're not using Mac, then your best bet is OpenShot. Because OpenShot makes creating simple videos really simple. Because it's all drag and drop and it's easy. But the problem is, is once they get beyond that idea of simple videos, then it becomes a little more challenging. So that, it brings me back to my little story. And this happened, I can't remember if it was 1999 or 2000. I was at my second Linux convention. And I was, you know, I was, it was a long time ago, I was still wide-eyed and it was an amazing event and I was speaking, it was the first time I ever met Miguel de Acasa. It was the first time I met Linus Torvalds. And I was, you know, talking to all these people that I had been writing about. And so I, there was one particular company that I had to talk to. And that company was Loki Games. And back then, Loki Games were their job, their goal was to port popular Linux games, or port popular Windows games to Linux. And they had ported Myth 2 and Hexen and Descent and Railroad Tycoon and a few other games to Linux. And I had played them a masterful job of porting these games. I mean, it was great. You could, you put the CD in and you installed the game and you played the game just like you were on Linux, just like you were on Windows. And so I I had to interview the CEO of the company. I was so excited about this. So I'm talking to the CEO of the company and he, I immediately knew something was wrong and because he was kind of a little down. Eventually he told me that it wasn't working. And I said, what do you mean it's not working? These games play so perfectly and you've done a great job. And he said, no, that's not the problem. The problem is not my developers or the ability to port the games. The problem, people aren't buying them. The Linux community was demanding games. They wanted games to play. They wanted native ports of these games to play. And if they had them available, they would not pay the money for them because they had been used to getting all of their software free and they refused to pay for the software. So at this point, it was like the company trying to do this couldn't afford to do it because nobody would purchase the games. And it was not a tragedy, but it was that this company was doing a great job and they just couldn't continue because the catch-22 was even though the community wanted the games, they wanted them for free. But unfortunately, for a company, free doesn't keep the lights on. And it's one of the reasons why I talk about Softmaker a lot, which is an office suite. It's kind of in competition with Libre Office, it's an open source and it's not free. But it runs on Linux and it runs really well on Linux. And in fact, it does a better job of working with Microsoft Office documents than does Libre Office. In fact, if you open up a Microsoft Office document on Softmaker versus Libre Office, you're going to see that Softmaker does a better job than during the pages than Libre Office. But the thing is is that the Linux community, first and foremost, complains that Softmaker is not open source and then second, it's not free. If you want the tools, if you want good tools, sometimes you might have to pay for them. And when the community refuses to pay for them, what would happen? What would happen? If Ubuntu and Arch and Linux meant an elementary OS and all of these distributions all of a sudden started charging, would people still use them? I don't know. What do you think? I think you have touched a point that like really, really, I have been thinking about it a lot and actually I was planning to do a videos called Linux is Not Free and I think I should do that with you. Nothing in life is free to be honest. Nothing. I spend more on beer every month than on you know but the fact is that I also buy software like Adobe, I pay $50 per month for that. I am subscribed to Google Music, I am paying $15 for that because I don't see ads on YouTube and I get access to music, I am subscribed to Apple Music, I am subscribed to Dropbox, Google Drive, you know, I am even subscribed to Microsoft Office 365 because as you said, you know, we need tools sometimes and okay, no offenses but you know when I started paying for this software, any idea, any guesses? What was the question? When did I start paying for the software? I'm going to guess a couple of years ago. No, why? What was the reason? Why were the reasons that you start paying for software because you needed tools that worked? No, it was after I bought Mac. Oh, that's the same thing that happened to me. Yeah, because before that when I was pure and this is actually not old. We moved to United States from Germany in 2013 and I was a pure Linux user and my system was dying and I needed a new system and by that time high DPI or retina display became popular so I went to and my main system, the big desktop was on a ship that would come six months later because we were like, you know, PSAing from, because my wife worked for the DoD and so that machine was not going to be there and I needed a system so I went to find a machine and I looked around and there was no system by that time which had high DPI monitor and I knew that my system is four or five years. I talked to Samsung and they said it will be available in October and that was already July so I could not wait. So very heavy heartedly I bought Mac because the Mac was there and I talked to Greg Kesh, everybody knows Greg and he said, yeah, you can install Linux on it but key mapping may be a big challenge but you can try so I bought Mac and you won't believe that I ran Linux on it for one or two months but then battery life and everything, high DPI was not supported so everything was, so I went back to Mac and that's when, you know, one thing that I I used to run my own sites and one thing I used to use a lot was RSS, you know, reader and on Linux you get RSS readers by a dozen, you know, a dime. There's so many RSS readers and IRC clients. On Mac I didn't find any. So I bought my first application on desktop ever that was the RSS, you know, kind of reader. After that once I got exposed to high DPI I didn't know, LibreOffice was not rendering I met Ayatolloh at Opensron Conf and I showed that you know the LibreOffice, the rendering font rendering was pixelated because it was not detecting high DPI and even he was using macOS and he we compared I bought pages because pages were not free back then and after that, you know it just kind of became, because suddenly what happened was I was exposed to high quality software. Before that I was like using, you know, g-edit and everything where I I didn't care about how the tools look but after that suddenly I was exposed wow, you know what you really can't have a very good experience when you're using these tools and everything looks look nice and then everything look nice you feel inspired the thing is, okay, I don't want to say that but this is AirPod okay, but when you look at it the design inspires you you know, so good design that's why human civilization, if you go and look at Taj Mahal in Agra okay, or any other historical they're beautiful because they inspire so human civilization is not about just putting you know, four sticks and build something you know, it should be beautiful, lovely so I was exposed and then I realized that you know what, you have to pay for it for free, I did use Microsoft Office for a while the crack version, but then ethically I felt that no, even if I don't support Microsoft I'm going to pay for the software and I bought it, then I bought Photoshop and ever since I pay for everything, even you know when I was using my I do a lot of 3D printing you can see behind me and there's a free tool slicer, oh wow, you got cat ooh, hi I got slicer but it cannot do custom support, so I bought you know, Simplify 3D, which is also available for Linux desktop and it was $179 but I bought it, why? because I need to, so the whole transition from not pay, no, I should not pay for software, it must be free, from the Linux word it changed when I moved to Mac word, because I think it just changes the mental because you start valuing things that you know somebody is putting in effort and you start valuing quality over cost I agree, and what's interesting my cat does not want to leave me that's fine, I can get mine okay, come here we have this weird relationship he doesn't like to be away from me for very long you know what's interesting you bring up Mac and that was the first time I paid for software as well but what's interesting is there are tools on Mac that you find in the app store that I don't want to pay for because there are better options on Linux for free, yes, yes and you know like an FTP client it's like why do I need to pay for an FTP client when there's FileZilla and there are other options you know, or other offerings but it's interesting that on certain levels you can't beat the Linux software but it's not until you get into professional grade that that's where Linux starts to falter and I think that is an important factor to understand is that what Linux Linux has taken over enterprise computing in the data center enterprises could not could not function without Linux now but at the same time small businesses Linux has yet to find any traction in small business and then on the user level Linux does great with certain applications and it's like I said it's only when they get into professional grade that Linux just can't handle that they just can't stand up to things like Mac and I think the term is prosumer there's consumer and prosumer Linux does great with consumer Linux does not do well with prosumer and I think that that would be a great market for some Linux developers to target targeting is the prosumer market and because you know there's another issue that Linux applications face with porting from you know these big companies and that issue is and I know we've talked about this before but the fragmentation I recently had an interaction with and I'm talking about SoftMaker and I apologize but the SoftMaker listened to our last our last episode and they reached out to me and they said a couple of keys so you can test out the software because they knew that I had had problems with LibreOffice opening up these manuscripts with hundreds of comments so they said we want you to try this and open up your manuscripts with this software and see if it works so I said great let me try and they gave me the key and I went to install the software on elementary OS and it wouldn't work it wouldn't install so I went back to the developer and I said I can't get it to install and they said what kind of distribution are you using and I said I'm using elementary OS and they said well that's one of the ones we haven't tested it on I said it works great on Ubuntu so I got on a virtual machine and I installed it on Ubuntu and it installed like that and now what it turns out was it was one font on my font collection that was causing elementary OS to not install but what I had to do was I had to zip up my font directory the home dot fonts directory I zipped that up, sent it off to SoftMaker I said find out which font it is and they emailed me back and said remove this font and it'll install lo and behold I removed that font and it installed just fine but the point is there are so many variables for developers to take into consideration when developing for Linux and I think that that's a big reason it's another big reason why we don't have Photoshop or Microsoft Office for Linux, we have users refusing to pay for software and we have too much fragmentation on the desktop just imagine you mentioned SoftMaker imagine when they have to target Windows which I think still has more than 90% marketing in our consumer space they have to target just one platform they have just make the mistake these companies don't have hundreds and thousands of developers they have like five or six or one or two developers they work on that and it's done, Mac OS done, Linux how many distribution you want to open Suzy, Red Hat, Fedora and it's not just distributions it's distributions it's desktop environments what development do you are using Qt or Qt not only that not a framework but also the version of the same desktop all the way from Ubuntu 12 to Ubuntu 16 or 17 or 18 that is why these are commercial companies if you're a free and open you're a developer who are doing everything in your free time that's fine but if you're a professional you imagine if you're working eight hours on something you get paid for working on something for eight hours you pay that eight hours versus you get half an hour to work on something you can imagine the quality of work you would get either way it's simple number one number two is that the returns as you said that Linux users are not willing to pay the returns for these companies yes, you are not getting that much return for the investment you're making and you have to make more investment because you need more developers to support and test all these and then a new version of Linux coming out every six months so there's no incentive there I would like to change it I would like to think that I wonder what would happen let's just have a hypothetical here what if Adobe came out and they said we're going to port we're going to make a version of Photoshop for Linux but here's the kicker two kickers it's not going to be free you're going to have to pay for it just like you have to pay for it on Windows or Mac and number two we're only going to port it to Ubuntu Linux the long term support Ubuntu Linux running GNOME that's it that's all we can that's all the resources we can put into this development is for one distribution and one desktop what would be the reaction I think bad yeah I think so first of all I will totally ignore all those people who say I don't want to pay for it if you don't want to pay for it please go and do whatever you want to do I don't want to do anything with you nothing is free in life would you work for free for me I don't want to pay for the software number one number two is that I think this problem can be Adobe doesn't have to stick to Ubuntu and GNOME because the big problem here is of course there's one problem with Adobe especially because graphic suit is that you also need access to GPU and a lot of other hardware for example on my macOS if I don't enable CUDA the same 4K footage will take 10 hours to render and I cannot even actually play the 4K footage because software acceleration with OpenGL is not enough so I have to enable CUDA fully optimize CUDA drivers so that I can do that same with Lightroom Photoshop is not that sensitive but if I'm doing a lot of effects then you know it does help you know but it's not a big deal but for videography it's important so but it may be very easy for me to work with NVIDIA and AMD to push drivers for desktop Linux or Linux desktop whatever you call it I always confuse it but the big problem is how to distribute Adobe Suite on Linux so I think instead of sticking to one distribution or one desktop environment they should just pick app images there snap is there and flat back is there now the big problem is should they put it all three no they should just put one pick one you know platform out of these three and you know the Linux community should just line up behind that this because your pro and cons everything if you look in Germany there is a lot of things good on US you know there are a lot of things that are better in Sweden and Canada and Britain you know but you are living in Germany I am living in the US so we have to make compromises right so we cannot have triple citizenship and we move around from Canada to Canada to eat food and then fly over to Germany to drink beer and then fly back to US to sleep at night in a big bed now we may compromise this so just pick one format make the compromises and that's be done don't make compromises with Noam or Katie or Ubuntu every distribution as long as first of all drivers should be there so that it can be used and second is that it should support that you know app format period and then just imagine Adobe has to look at windows as one platform Mac as one platform and Linux I don't want to use that finger and Linux as one platform simple period and suddenly the whole Linux word is at disposal of to Adobe developers everybody can use their suite and I mean money is not even a big deal you know and then just the way on Adobe offers two licenses so I can use it on the same license on Mac and Windows at the same time so I can have it on two machines so they can add one more machine so you can also run it on Linux so you buy one subscription for Adobe Photoshop for $9 per month and you run on the app Mac, Linux and Windows no big deal and you're right you are dead on with this that snap and flat pack and app image could be a game changer yes very well could be a game changer because those applications contain all of the dependencies they need to run these apps and you know we have a great release Firefox as a snap image and you know I remember a few years ago when snap first was released I was afraid that you know it was released everybody was so excited about the idea behind flat snap and then all of a sudden it kind of died off and I was so afraid that we had this amazing opportunity in our hands and it would just die off because we weren't going to develop the snaps and you know and they've slowly been trickling in and this could be the game changer that would allow companies like Adobe and Microsoft to develop snaps for Photoshop or Microsoft Office and all of these great tools that could then be allowed to be used on Linux then the Linux community has to open up their wallets and pay for them mm-hmm and there's one more advantage of using snap versus you know what is the biggest problem that I face on Linux what? if a library office is released I install the latest version immediately on Mac and Windows system immediately the moment the press release hits I install it on Linux I have to wait for weeks depending on my distribution I'm using because you know that will not be an official repository for one week or two week or whatever or you use PPA on Ubuntu or you know third-party repository on other distribution so your whole thing is like it's stuff with so many different repository and it's so complicated with the snaps what happens is and it's critical when there are like security updates because commercial applications because they are used so widely that you know they have a big attack surface so more people target it so they like Adobe I get like updates like on weekly basis oh my god they are like improving features like I was worried when they moved to license model that they know now I'm stuck with a yearly they won't update it but now I'm getting much more frequent updates than I was getting when I was paying you know for version to version and so with snap the thing is the beauty is the moment they update the software the update is pushed to snap you install it immediately on your system damn period no complication so it makes life easier for the developer because the developer knows that you know those updates will be running on user system users are also safe because they know that they don't have to do worry for work around or wait for one month to get those updates it helps both parties and I think that it is I think that the distribution developers are beholden to start use making use of snaps and and I think that if if distributions start depending upon snaps then I think there will be more impetus to make more snaps and I think that that could just be a domino effect and once snaps become snaps and flat pack and app image once that type of tool becomes this de facto standard then we might continue inching ever closer to having those third party ports to Linux but what has to happen first is that distributions need to show that tools like snap can in fact become the standard right and you know right now you install Ubuntu and you open up the Ubuntu software center and then you have to I believe I'm correct then you have to enable snap support in the GNOME software whatever Ubuntu software center and then you have to when you're looking for a piece of software to install are you going to install the snap or are you going to install the regular version it can get kind of confusing and the thing is what needs to happen I think what really needs to happen for this to truly trickle down all the way is that snaps need to become the de facto standard to the point where that is the only thing offered on the app store or the snap version is that all of the software on your distribution is installed via snaps and I think once that happens the doors will be flung wide open there is only two problem here first of all no offenses to the desktop but more distributions also think of themselves as gateways because they have so much power because they control what applications run on their system I talked to a project manager of a very big distribution but so you know they lose this control you know because they have so much power and suddenly they are threatened by snaps and threatened by flatback because they are giving and they say so many thing oh app developers doesn't know how to yes they do know they have been developing apps for so many years they know how it works and it's better to distribute it to the apps than to keep to yours of second is politics because you know snaps come from canonical so other I don't want to name anybody but other communities may not embrace it and other project will come from other project canonical may not embrace it so I think the whole problem is once again back to the square one where it's not at all about technological superiority it's about petty politics yeah yeah yeah and they we as a Linux community we have to overcome this yes yes every distribution needs to start thinking about striving towards universality right and I think that is key to this whole mess and you know you're right they need to stop the fighting needs to stop and people the distribution developers need to come together and say let's decide upon a standard and let's use it whether that standard is snaps or flat pack or app image let's just decide on one and use it and start moving forward because then everything could then develop at a much quicker and more reliable pace and you know I wouldn't be testing these different distributions and going oh wait a minute okay on distribution X when I open up LibreOffice it's still opening up version 5 but on this distribution start opening version 6 what's going on and you know and I think that I think that it would it would ease a lot of the confusion for new users to Linux and I think that's kind of important I think that I think that developers need to understand that that Linux is not going to grow until new users are fully and completely embraced I think developers should sit down and think number one is do you what is your ultimate ultimate goal your ultimate goal is to help users in using this platform in getting things done you're basically because you are working out altruism you know you're working your free time and your goal is to spread so you should think about helping these users helping users like us I mean we are like cringing we are like begging please so instead of fighting over these kind of issues instead of making it as a political issue instead of a technical issue you can package technical issue as you know that oh it's not about technology this is the problem but no you have to make compromises we always make compromises in life so please just think about users you know I think we should empower users to be able to do what they want to do in our short lives so that we can achieve our dreams we can write novels we can make films we can write poetry we can create all the amazing thing that human civilization you know we have been doing for years using these free and open source platforms and tools the tools may or may not be open but at least the platform is open and the more we use the open platform it will trickle down just the way as we were discussing in the beginning the open sources become the de facto software development model why because all the innovation is happening on top of Linux and Linux in the enterprise world so same will trickle down you know so when Adobe sees that it really doesn't matter if the source code is closed or open people are going to pay for it number one second is that Adobe has expertise like I mean we all know you know nobody else even if the whole story is out about Harry Potter nobody else can write Harry Potter nobody else can write Game of Game no matter so Adobe has all the engineers expertise in its DNA nobody is going to beat you in your own game so when they find they will open because the code is no more important they can monetize through subscription model and people are willing to pay so everybody will start you know using open source as their development model all the way from Adobe to Microsoft because it's simple economy you know if people see that they can make money like this way they will do it so in the future we always tend to choose a simpler path we don't go for complicated things and we evolved we learned we evolved we changed business model we changed lifestyles so companies don't want to over imagine why would Adobe I mean I actually interviewed Adobe you know few weeks ago I went to publish an interview and they are doing a lot of open source in the cloud space why because you know they know that you know they can you know development is happening in open source world so a lot of people from different you know companies will contribute to the code so if Adobe sees you know that you know Adobe Photoshop code can be improved at a faster pace they will do that but the thing is you have to create that environment to welcome these companies so don't be hostile towards them don't say I don't want to pay I'm willing to pay if you cannot afford to pay please don't use computer you know and that's another thing if you can't afford to pay then open source is great but no if you can't afford to pay then yeah if you cannot buy a flight ticket you don't fly if you cannot buy beer you don't drink beer you don't go if you can't afford to read a book you don't buy a book somehow digitization has made you can steal it I don't buy it I think I used to but I don't why I pay because when I watch movies like you know either filmmaker I know how much effort is put in there I I buy it from iTunes I pay that money because somebody is putting in effort so I don't do free stuff yeah that's a big thing in especially in the well not especially but in the writing community you know and I kind of blame Apple for this with iTunes and well in Google Play as well you know there's this there's this race to free that people only seem to want to be using apps that are free and they assume that eventually bands and writers and such will be giving away their work for free but the thing is and you touched on this at one point it's like I don't ask you to do your job for free you get paid to do your job and I get paid to do my job one of the ways that I get paid to do my job is when people purchase my books and when people ask me you know are you going to give it away for free I say well no because I've put a lot of work into this and I don't I don't expect you to give me your work for free so you can't expect me to give me you my work for free and you know open source is a different different beast but and and like I said I have an amazing amount of respect for the open source community and open source developers and Linux distributions and I wouldn't be where I am today without Linux to be quite honest but at the same time you know if like I said if Linux wants to reach the prosumer level Linux is going to have to kind of up its game to reach that and Linux users are going to have to be willing to open up their wallets and support the companies that want to support them I agree there is only one little correction that I would like to add there is that open source does not mean free open sources open sources simply develop software development model it's not a business model business model is totally different you can not get red hat enterprise Linux you can download one copy for free but you cannot so when you said I respect open source I also respect open source doesn't mean free of cost some people have kind of associated with open source you know because a lot of developers since the reason is that they do it in their free time they already have full time jobs so when they most of the time they create some package as hobby so they just share it with public just the way you go to Flickr and a lot of people post their pictures for free you know that doesn't mean Flickr means free of cost pictures means free of cost you spend $1000 in go take pictures that doesn't mean that every photograph that is taken ever should be free of cost yes some people choose to make it for free that's fine they can do that but it has open sources nothing to do with free of cost and the whole point goes back to the same point if you cannot afford it you know but you know and some people tend to believe that the writing is I was talking to somebody and he said oh writing there is no business model in writing writing should be free really because I was talking about ad revenue from website or something and he was like why the reason was that he himself work as a researcher full time and he does his own writing part time at night for 2 hours where he puts all the garbage from the internet and posts it on his site for him it's fine because it's not his full time job but will you do that research for free right and second thing is that as a creator of my work I decide how I distribute my work I decide how I package my work you don't get to tell me how I distribute my work how I package my work if you come to my restaurant you have to get the menu the way I have prepared I set the table you can buy the food take it to your home and then you can do whatever you want right so this is another thing that sometimes I hear from people they try to tell me how I should or what model I should know I get to decide exactly I think that's part of the beauty where we are I've worked very hard for 20 years to get where I am now and I get to call a lot of the shots now especially with my fiction work I get to call all of the shots even if my editor says you need to do X I can say no I'm going to do Y but I usually when my editor says do X I usually do X at the same time I get to decide what the price of the product is I get to decide where the product gets distributed and I get to decide what software I use to create the product I use a combination of open source and closed source tools to get the job done one of the most important tools that I use I'm being straight up honest here the most important tools I do for my fiction is Calibra and that is the tool that I use to convert the final manuscript into an EPUB or Mobi format I don't know what I would do without Calibra and Calibra is a free open source tool and it's absolutely fantastic I would go as far as to say it's probably the best tool at doing what it does I don't think I could find a closed source tool that does a better job than Calibra the whole point is the beauty of this discussion the whole point between you and me is that right tool to get the job done in 80% of cases that tool happens to be an open source tool and we want that to become 90% or 99% or 100% commercial players in our Linux word when I say our Linux word I also use back and windows so I'm not an elitist I use everything whatever work to bring in our Linux word so that we get access to why should you be deprived of great technology because of your platform as humans we should be able to use everything that is there I mean we should be able to consume everything that is created by any other human being simple we should be using each other's work so I think in a nutshell I don't want to wrap it you will be wrapping it because you always wrap it but I think what the message or the conclusion today is that we should embrace these non-free software products willing to pay for it and try to create an environment within the Linux word where it's very easy for those developers to deliver their applications to users like us who are like begging please bring your application to our tools because we love this platform and we love your tools bring it here so now that's my take what's your I think ultimately it boils down to the instead of each camp shouting out at each other what it needs to become is a dialogue a civil discussion open source and closed source developers between Linux and Mac between developers and users we need civil intelligent discussions that can open up these doors and allow the the proprietary software to be able to function properly on Linux and that two way street being that if the developers are willing to take the time to take those steps and get the software developed for Linux that they know that the end users are going to be willing to pay for it and or if they're developing a light version and a full version whatever they have to do but like you said the ecosystems need to function together because it doesn't I love the fact that I have all the tools I need I would love it even more if the tools I need all functioned on Linux because I personally find Linux to be the most reliable platform I use and part of that is it's just easy to work with and if we were to have all of these tools in the toolkit that could function on this amazingly powerful and reliable and secure platform imagine the work we could get done without having to shift from platform to platform and I think that that is at the heart of the issue at the enterprise level we have that but at the end user level we don't have that yet and I think we can have it and I think it just boils down to open minds just like open source and in the end what is going to happen is that then you won't even have to worry about switching from one platform to another platform because you know that all platform they have access to these tools and then you will actually pick the best platform which is there which nobody's guess would be Linux either way the thing is no matter how you look at it in a win-win situation you are kind of you know encouraging and pushing companies like Adobe to open source all of their suite because they see the value of the value is somewhere else not in the source code you enable everybody to use all the tools that they need for their work just because of the platform which means more and more users will move to Linux but there are some problems that have to be fixed and we have discussed I think that's a win-win situation that's an ideal word now the point is that what is community going to do so let's hope you know let's see what kind of comments we get for this video so you know just you know feel free to share your thoughts let's have an open civil discussion about this topic it's very simple anyway everybody thank you so much for joining Swapnol and I intelligent discussion about the Linux platform we'll be back again next week with another topic we haven't yet decided what it is if you have any suggestions that you would like us to talk about please fill in the comments and let us know what you want us to blather on about in this video series but thank you very much for joining us because we wouldn't do this if it weren't for you and remember keep an open mind keep an open discussion about open source