ROI in OSS (was: GIMP 2.2 splash screen ...)

[Ken D'Ambrosio]

Fred wrote:

>It's more work than it appears at first. If the wrapped Gimp behaves
>even slightly different from Photoshop, die-hard Photoshop users will
>reject it. I mean, look at OpenOffice vs. MS Office. Microsoft does not
>seem to be hurting in the least from OO. Sun did a good job with OO, but
>even with Sun backing it MS Office still rules the day. 
>  
>
And lest we forget, there's a potential downside to a perfect wrapper: 
there have been many "look and feel" lawsuits over the years, and most 
of them have been *won* by the "bad guys":

SEA Software vs. PKWare  (arc vs. pkarc)
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/

Lotus vs. Borland  (Lotus 1-2-3 vs. Quattro)
Apple vs. MS  (Yeah, MS was the "good" guy for once.  Oh, and this was 
GUI vs. GUI.)
http://www.gesmer.com/publications/softcopy/20.php (for both of the above)

Hayes vs. everyone (AT command set)
[Search for "Hayes" in http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/08/09/03/0121.php ]

The ironic part that I enjoy here is that, without exception, every 
company that tried this trick lost out in the end.  The backlash against 
SEA was so fierce that ARC was dropped en-masse as an accepted 
compression standard, thus begetting ZIP.  Lotus simply dwindled until 
it was cheap enough for IBM to snap up.  Apple almost died, until Steve 
came back.  And Hayes literally shut their doors.  [Not to mention, 
though I will now, the Ashton Tate vs. Fox Software suit that was going 
swimmingly for AT until someone noticed that dBase, itself, was a 
derivative product of something called Vulcan, and *poof*, no more 
Ashton Tate.  http://www.foxprohistory.org/people_ashton.htm ]