Whining about Picasa

The Linux community, or at least large chunks of it, have worked really hard to entice large companies to develop applications for the Linux platform. I consider it a sign of success that a company like Google would take the time and effort to port a desktop application like Picasa to Linux, and — even though I’m not a big digital photo person — I was quite happy the other day when Google made the announcement.

And then I read this entry, carping because Google didn’t port Picasa in a pleasing enough manner:

Dear Google,

Yesterday you announced Picasa for Linux. But I’m a bit confused. I don’t find it. All I see is a Windows binary installation and a Wine installation. Is that what you call a Linux version?

And it goes on, in what I’d consider a snide and insulting fashion. For added irony points, the poster is running Google ads on his site…

Far be it from me to suggest that any Linux user refrain from speaking their mind, but I hope that Google — and other companies that might want to port apps to Linux — understands that this fellow is squarely in the minority.

I installed Picasa on an Ubuntu Dapper system, and it seemed fine to me — no major glitches, and it integrated well enough into the desktop that I didn’t really notice that it was a Wine app or app running under Wine — whatever the correct phrasing there. (It’s almost midnight, I’m tired, and I can’t be arsed to look it up right now…) From my limited testing, it seems to run just fine. So, the quality argument goes out the window as far as I’m concerned. (I wonder if the poster even bothered to run the app to see if it was “bad quality” as he suggests?)

Would it be better if Picasa was a native Linux app? Probably, but it is what it is, and it’s a great deal more than Google is obligated to do.

Google’s Picasa project also resulted in a bunch of patches going back to the Wine folks. Again, this is all for the good. The Wine project has been slowly, slowly, slowly working its way towards a 1.0 — and Google’s patches no doubt will provide a nudge or two in that direction.

Finally, the poster complains about Google releasing a non-open source program. I’d love it if Google had released Picasa as GPL’ed software, or under a different open source license — that would certainly be a generous and beneficial thing for Google to do. But the fact that they didn’t release it under an open source license is not a reason to go whining about the fact that they at least met the Linux community part way by releasing free-as-in-beer software that runs on Linux.

As far as I’m concerned whining about Google releasing Picasa for Linux — even as a non-open source Wine app — is kind of like complaining about the food at a party. If it’s not to your taste, or the host or hostess decides they’d rather not share the recipe with you, then be gracious and say “thanks anyway.”

To complain to the host that their offering is unsatisfactory, without even a hint of appreciation for the effort, is boorish and unlikely to generate any future invites. Complaining when large companies take a few steps towards Linux by offering applications for Linux isn’t likely to help “the cause” — whether that’s attracting additional applications, or encouraging companies to develop open source apps.

I agree with Robert Love:

Releasing a Picasa variant for Linux signals that Google cares about the Linux market, for one reason or another. Simple as that.

As a side note — I do understand where a bad attitude towards Wine ports might come from. Many, many years ago, Corel offered a Linux version of Corel Office that used Wine. It’s my understanding that Corel did put a lot of work into Wine, but the Corel Office for Linux was very, very bad. I tried it a few times and it was amazingly unstable.

However, that’s no reason to assume that Picasa is as unstable, but I can see where one might develop a slight bias.