Equal opportunity open source
(Credit:
Mozilla)
I just downloaded Mozilla's Firefox 3.0 Beta 4, and loved what I saw:
See that? Firefox is localized into a wide range of languages, which is great. But what I appreciate even more is that it treats Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux as peers. In Microsoft's world, software runs solely or best on Microsoft's operating system, database, etc. Given the chance, most proprietary software companies behave like this.
Not Mozilla. Not Eclipse. Not Zimbra. Etc.
There's something about open source that speaks up for the potential user who isn't part of the mainstream. Somebody, somewhere, is like that person and has contributed the code to bring the outsider in.
No, not all open source is written for every platform in every language. True open source, however, doesn't mitigate against someone doing this, which for the more popular projects generally leads to a myriad of "itches" getting scratched.
I love Firefox. I love that it doesn't treat me like a second-class citizen because I use a Mac. I love its egalitarian (and now super-speedy) nature.
This is how software should be written.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
In fairness, I've found in my experience that Eclipse doesn't treat Linux as an "equal" to Windows. While Eclipse runs great on Linux, there are a number of areas where Eclipse has made tactical decisions that complicate integration within Linux distributions. I've raised these issues among the Eclipse community before, and while the foundation leaders have been very responsive, the community in general that I've spoken with seems surprisingly agnostic about it.
I'm a big fan of Eclipse. And I know that at a certain level Linux is important to Eclipse. But I wouldn't today use them as an example of an open source project that treats Linux as an equal to Windows.