What other things might have gotten in the way of porting Rhino to the free folks?
Because Rhino’s core code isn’t cross-platform.
nah, they got it on mac already, but Graham made it clear
PS there are lies, damned lies and statistics
Having code on both Win and Mac doesn’t mean the code is cross-platform.
One more time in case you missed the endless discussions we have had in the past here -
Developing something like Rhino is not something that you just need to write a few lines of code to make your ‘cross-platform’ code run on a different platform. It’s a completely different problem that involves adapting graphic interfaces, native os environments, third party libraries etc… Witness the Rhino for Mac development which started in 2007 and is still not 100% parallel with the Windows version.
That effort needs to be warranted by enough customer base to pay for the development by buying licenses. It’s obvious that the user base is not there to support this commercial reality - i.e. enough Linux users who are in an industry that might have a use for Rhino and would consider buying it. A corollary issue is that for people who are into running ‘free’ software, it’s hard to sell $1000 licenses.
Cool, I mean I didn’t expect Rhino on Linux to become a thing, just wanted to learn a bit about Rhino’s internal architecture/business plan and this seemed like a good pretext. Thanks for clarifying this.