Re: Does anyone else think Wolfram Research are unfair to Unixusers?

Herman Rubin wrote:

I guess the Unix versions of Mathematica are selling less than the Linux/Windows/Mac ones, which is why WRI don't put as much effort into the Unix ones. I think this is most evident in the fact that Solaris x86 is supported only on AMD CPUs, not Intel.

You don't make it available, or you charge too much, and it
doesn't sell. At many scientific meetings, I have asked the
Scientific Word (I think I have it right) why they do not
have their partially WYSIWYG version of TeX available for Unix, and they claim it would not sell well enough for the
effort. I cannot believe this.


Unix software was historically free, and to a good extent still is free. At the most basic level, the operating system is often free (i.e. Linux and Solaris), whereas Windows is not free.


That *might* make people less inclined to pay for such software on Unix than they would on Windows, where most useful software has to be paid for.

There is an expectation on Unux for software to be free, but an expectation for it to be paid for on Windows. I realise this is a bit of a simplification, so I'm not suggesting it will hold in every case.

.

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