Hello gremlin,
It takes a lot less time to mimic software than it does to create the
first version. If someone is pretty much copying another person’s
work, it takes less time to come up with ideas and also to solve
outstanding problems. Software can be reverse engineered and ideas and
code can be copied. User interface is another huge problem that the
original designers have to solve, while people who clone the
application can simply copy it over.
It will also certainly depend on the skills of the programmers on each
team, the resources that are available and the quality of the final
product. Finding the man hours it took to create AIM, Trillian,
Windows 2000 and the Chinese clone is probably an impossible task.
If you take a look at the Trillian website, you will find that the
first version of Trillian was released on July 1, 2000. By November
they had added AIM to the chat, but you must realize that Trillian
never really copied the AIM servers etc. They merely found the holes
that AIM uses to interact with users and figured out a way to format
requests so that their users could interact with AIM users as well.
http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/about/history.html
You can be sure though that with a project as complex as Windows 2000,
the Chinese developers might find themselves needing more hours than
it took Microsoft to develop Windows 2000. There are so many things
that can go wrong in a development project as complex as Windows 2000,
and there are not many companies that could pull off such projects.
You also have to realize that even Microsoft did not start “afresh”
with Windows 2000, Microsoft gets ideas from other operating systems
including Linux and Apple… so who is to say that they were the first
to come up with a certain idea?
I found a ZDNET article that says: “The first version of Windows is
estimated to have taken around two years to develop. Windows 2000 took
around one thousand developers five years to produce. It is understood
that China wants desktop functionality comparable to Windows 98.”
Source: http://203.63.62.82/newstech/os/story/0,2000024997,20266826,00.htm
This still tells us very little because a number such as one thousand
developers will hardly do the trick. We do not know how often they
worked, and you have to think that if a developer is added late in the
development, precious time is wasted as Microsoft has to “catch him
up” with what has been going on. In addition there are thousands of
beta testers involved in Microsoft betas as well as various companies
working closely with Microsoft. We also have no idea
Also Microsoft probably has more resources at its disposal than the
Chinese programmers do, including tight connections with hardware
vendors, existing customer base and OEM’s. They have a much larger
budget and employ complex tools to find problems in code and do
automated testing.
I think for smaller projects that cloning something is much easier to
do than actually coming up with the original code, especially if
methods such as reverse engineering are used. It is highly dependent
though on the skills of programmers and on the amount of quality
assurance the final product has.
There really is no definite answer possible for this question, in some
cases it will take more time and in other cases it will take less
time. I would guess though that most clones are created much sooner
than the first versions.
I hope this is the type of answer you were expecting. If you need any
clarifications, please let me know and I will do my best to further
assist you.
tisme-ga
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