I was listening to episodes of FLOSS Weekly today, and one two episodes back was talking about how Cinelerra and Lumiera were the most important open software projects that the Linux community needed.

I disagree.

There's no doubt that professional video editing software is one of the critical high-end computing needs that must be as platform-agnostic as possible, but there's one need that's still today Windows-only: Linux accounting software for small and medium-size businesses. The business accounting software market is dominated by Intuit QuickBooks—the same Intuit who TurboTaxed me a year ago—and all but monopolized by companies whose products are Windows-only.

This is stopping companies from migrating completely to Linux, Mac OS, and Unix, forcing them to keep paying the Microsoft tax. A Linux-based or intranet Web-based business accounting application is critical to breaking the Microsoft and Intuit monopolies.

Also, the FLOSS episode about Bug Labs was interesting. It talks about the Bug, an extensible handheld device platform.