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Why would you include Web Applications as part of that? Web applications are almost completely OS-agnostic. I can run my PHP application on Linux, on OSX, or on

Why would you include Web Applications as part of that? Web applications are almost completely OS-agnostic. I can run my PHP application on Linux, on OSX, or on Windows. It shouldn't count for any of the three operating systems because it wasn't built for any of them. It was built to run on a software stack which runs on all three.

jiggy2011 13y ago
But people do in fact choose to run them on Linux which is unlikely to be a purely arbitrary choice though by nature open source stacks will be more portable, but it seems perverse to use that as a negative argument.
- mynameisvlad 13y ago
  Sure, but people also choose to run them on Windows, and OSX. If it was Linux-only, then I could see why you'd include it as being "written for Linux" but web applications are, for the most part, OS-agnostic. People can choose to run it on a variety of platforms. Just because one is used more than the others does not mean it is the exclusive platform for web applications as a whole. You're not writing a PHP application for Linux, you're just writing a PHP application, which can run on one of Linux, Windows, OSX, etc. Just because you choose to run in on Linux does not mean you wrote it specifically to be run on Linux, nor should it be included in the metric for Linux apps.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Some web applications are more platform specific than others. Since Linux is the most popular OS for running web applications it seems reasonable to assume it was chosen for a reason and therefor web developers would be worse off if it were not available.
    - mynameisvlad 13y ago
      > Some web applications are more platform specific than others. Rarely. As I said before, you're not developing for Linux when you make a web application. You're developing for Rails/PHP/whathaveyou. These are all OS-agnostic and can be run on any OS. I can run my PHP app on my Macbook, my Linux server, or my friend's Windows desktop. They all work. Because it's not meant to be built for a particular OS. I don't understand how you can be this stubborn about it. If the language can be run on any number of platforms, then, by definition, it's not an application for one specific platform.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        I mean that a very large share of these applications are in practise deployed to Linux. If you total the $ revenue of these applications you would no doubt come to a very large figure.
        mynameisvlad 13y ago
        So? That's not the discussion at stake here. We're talking about apps being written for Linux vs OSX. By definition, a web app is not written for a particular platform (with certain exceptions like ASP.net). If anything, it'd fall into its own category.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        By that definition you can only count applications that rely on proprietary OS features, which you generally don't have with an open source OS (that's sort of the point). I don't think it's invalid to describe a web app deployed to Linux or an embedded system running Linux as a "Linux app" but I guess that is really semantics.
amznthrowaway 13y ago
Theoretically, you're correct. In practice, you look at a company like Amazon (where I work) and our software, while mostly it is written in Java and other high level languages, there are many bits and pieces written in C and C++, and even the high-level bits are likely to fail spectacularly if you try to run them on anything other than a close relative of the Linux distribution they were built for. This is just a fact of software development. Write-once run-everywhere is a virtual myth. Unless of course you're talking about building a single Linux virtual machine image and deploying it to thousands of servers. That actually works phenomenally. Doesn't work as well with Apple's software. Or Microsoft's for that matter (though this is largely a question of licensing cost.)

jiggy2011 13y ago

But people do in fact choose to run them on Linux which is unlikely to be a purely arbitrary choice though by nature open source stacks will be more portable, but it seems perverse to use that as a negative argument.

mynameisvlad 13y ago
Sure, but people also choose to run them on Windows, and OSX. If it was Linux-only, then I could see why you'd include it as being "written for Linux" but web applications are, for the most part, OS-agnostic. People can choose to run it on a variety of platforms. Just because one is used more than the others does not mean it is the exclusive platform for web applications as a whole. You're not writing a PHP application for Linux, you're just writing a PHP application, which can run on one of Linux, Windows, OSX, etc. Just because you choose to run in on Linux does not mean you wrote it specifically to be run on Linux, nor should it be included in the metric for Linux apps.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Some web applications are more platform specific than others. Since Linux is the most popular OS for running web applications it seems reasonable to assume it was chosen for a reason and therefor web developers would be worse off if it were not available.
  - mynameisvlad 13y ago
    > Some web applications are more platform specific than others. Rarely. As I said before, you're not developing for Linux when you make a web application. You're developing for Rails/PHP/whathaveyou. These are all OS-agnostic and can be run on any OS. I can run my PHP app on my Macbook, my Linux server, or my friend's Windows desktop. They all work. Because it's not meant to be built for a particular OS. I don't understand how you can be this stubborn about it. If the language can be run on any number of platforms, then, by definition, it's not an application for one specific platform.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      I mean that a very large share of these applications are in practise deployed to Linux. If you total the $ revenue of these applications you would no doubt come to a very large figure.
      - mynameisvlad 13y ago
        So? That's not the discussion at stake here. We're talking about apps being written for Linux vs OSX. By definition, a web app is not written for a particular platform (with certain exceptions like ASP.net). If anything, it'd fall into its own category.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        By that definition you can only count applications that rely on proprietary OS features, which you generally don't have with an open source OS (that's sort of the point). I don't think it's invalid to describe a web app deployed to Linux or an embedded system running Linux as a "Linux app" but I guess that is really semantics.

amznthrowaway 13y ago

Theoretically, you're correct. In practice, you look at a company like Amazon (where I work) and our software, while mostly it is written in Java and other high level languages, there are many bits and pieces written in C and C++, and even the high-level bits are likely to fail spectacularly if you try to run them on anything other than a close relative of the Linux distribution they were built for. This is just a fact of software development. Write-once run-everywhere is a virtual myth. Unless of course you're talking about building a single Linux virtual machine image and deploying it to thousands of servers. That actually works phenomenally. Doesn't work as well with Apple's software. Or Microsoft's for that matter (though this is largely a question of licensing cost.)