The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - Commercial Software and .NET Framework

Commercial Software and .NET Framework

I emailed a shareware marketing and distribution website and asked them how many of their visitors had .NET Framework installed. Their reply was 25%.

In reality I hardly know anyone who's not a developer and has the .NET Framework installed. So, has anyone already or is thinking to write a commercial software using the .NET Framework? Probably, tools for developers are a better contender?

Green Pajamas
Saturday, April 17, 2004

25% would be the most optimistic estimate I think. There are only two common ways someone can get .NET installed on their machine AFAIK. 1. Download it directly and install it. Basically only developers do this. 2. Install software that requires it and supplies it. There is very little of this. So most everyday users wont have it. 10% would be a realistic max I think.

Craig
Saturday, April 17, 2004

This thread has been done to death, I think.

Our public web site caters to non-tech savvy users, and we've found roughly 30% pentration for at least one version of the .NET framework. That 25% number is not at all surprising to me.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Here's one of the recent, related threads:

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/newyork/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=4529

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Thanks,

I only wanted to confirm how good the number was :)

Green Pajamas
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Uh, Craig - I doubt they're guessing. The framework is reported in web access logs.

Green - what kind of development do you do?

Philo

Philo
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Web applications.

But, I'm also looking forward for Desktop applications.

For example Vault and Go-Go Database are two desktop applications written in the .NET Framework. Vault is actually a web service + Desktop client, but its targetted to VS.NET developers - which have the framework installed anyway.

But, Go-Go Database is targetted to novice computer users. I also found several news readers written in .NET which are not necessarily used by developers only.

Green Pajamas
Saturday, April 17, 2004

For a web app, especially if it is a "corporate" one and not for home users, I would say go .Net, nobody has had issues installing the framework in our experience, and the development involved in .Net is so nice that it is definately worth it.

We have deployed .Net to about 300 servers (test and production) in about 80 companies in Australia and so far only one company has had the install fail. And for our desktop application it has been deployed to maybe 5000 desktops (4000 in one company) with not a single error.

And not one of those companies has expressed "moral" issues, such as "That is too new for us to use at the moment, we are waiting for version 2", with installing the .Net framework - all IT depts have just realised the software was important to their business and installed it as soon as requested by that business unit.

Chris
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Oh yeah, that one company had it fail on only one server, so the failure rate isn't 1:80, it is 1:300 for us so far - perhaps Philo can point to some figures from Microsoft (although I doubt they are willing to make that public).

Chris
Saturday, April 17, 2004

One other problem with corporate users (who are, increasingly, having only non-admin account) who want to try your .net software.

They can't install the .net framework.

And, btw, is that 25% figure for .net 1.1 or 1.0 ?

Mr. Analogy
Saturday, April 17, 2004

" (who are, increasingly, having only non-admin account)"

About time!

Crusty Admin
Sunday, April 18, 2004

Of the people who browse to our site with .NET, approximately 90% of them have 1.1 installed, and approximately 25% of them have 1.0 installed.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Monday, April 19, 2004