In late 2004 the number of end user Linux machines (the installed base
excluding servers) had exceeded the number of MacIntosh machines (these are
world wide numbers) at about 2.8% of the installed base.
In addition
projections at that time were that the number of end user Linux machines
would be 6% of the installed base by the end of 2006 and about 10% by 2010.
A far as I know these projections have so far been close to what has
happened. So the potential is for this to be significantly more than a 1%
kind of thing.

You can’t sell hardware to users if your hardware does not work on their
platforms and Linux is just now getting to the point where monitor profiling
and calibration make sense for many users. A year ago there was effectively
no linux market demand for these devices because the underlying systems did
not have good enough support for color management for this to be viable for
most Linux/Unix/BSD (*nix) users. But today and going forward I think that
the percent of *nix users who would purchase this type of device is going to
start growing and will reach Windows like levels in two to three years.
That
is in a few years the use of these devices will be nearly as common on Linux
machines as on Windows machines.

One of the interesting things about this is that the Mac, because of it
history of use in the pre-press and graphics industries, uses these devices
all out of proportion to the overall size of it’s user base. In fact
GretagMacbeth started out only producing software that supported the Mac
because at that time they didn’t think there was a market for these devices
on Windows. I think this is the same mistake they are making with the *nix
markets. IE. thinking it is a 1% thing when it is likely to be a 10% thing
when this matures in a few years.

X-Rite before the merge wit GMB had good support for platforms that were not
supported in their high level interface libraries in that they released
documentation of the device protocol to registered developers and placed no
restrictions on how that information could be used other than stipulating
that those developers and not X-Rite were responsible for supporting any
systems based on that information. IE. the information could be used to
build open source interfaces to the devices. At one point this was also
true
of GretagMacbeth but they started to move away from this approach a few
years
ago. X-Rite by withdrawing from the market all of the devices for which
this
information was available and not making the low level device interface
information available for the remaining devices have effectively stopped
supporting our platforms when they have traditionally provided that support
in the past. And they have done this right at the time when we most needed
it. Not a good way to build trust with this market segment.

GMBs SDK license for the EyeOne and the Huey is so restrictive that it
actually precludes the use of this library in open source projects although
the head of X-Rites software devision has told me that this was not what
they
had intended even though he acknowledges that this is in fact what it does.
Post merger we see X-Rite adopting much if not all of the GMB approach to
this.

From my talks with GMB and X-Rite they appear to actually believe that
having
a closed interface gives them a market advantage. I think this may be true
on the software side of things but I also think that it actually hurts their
efforts at marketing the hardware. Of course, as soon as some *nix
developer
reverse engineers the low level interface that advantage, if there actually
is one, is gone.

Hal V. Engel
project lead of LProf