Tom Ring wrote:

I would gladly pay double without a blink, and I doubt that it would be
that much work, in the long run, to make a Linux version. Your SW and
your call obviously, but you are making a very wrong assumption that
porting a version that runs under a different OS takes nearly the same
development effort.

I would gladly assist in making it work. I have no idea what language
it is written in, but as long as it is not in something MS specific it
shouldn't be that hard to port.

*Sigh*. I get this a lot.

The main program, 70,000 lines of code at last count, is in Visual Basic
6 and incorporates many direct calls to the Windows API for speed and
increased functionality. The calculating engines (a few tens of
thousands of lines of code) and some main program routines are in
Fortran, and make use of commercial math libraries for fast calculation
of some complex functions. The Fortran routines also make a limited
number of Windows API calls.

The port of a functioning EZNEC program from DOS to Windows, back when
EZNEC was somewhat smaller, took me about two years of full time work.
After some short experiments with VB.NET, it looks like a port to that
(Windows) language probably would take something like six months, plus
an unknown amount of time to find and solve the huge number of subtle
bugs caused by the port. But not only would the user not gain anything,
there would actually be a negative impact, so I don't plan on doing it.
Converting to a C Windows program would probably be a one or two year
project. That might make it easier, although by no means simple, to port
to Linux, but would be of no benefit to Windows users so the Linux
market would have to pay for the effort. Sorry, you'd need to pay a lot
more than twice the current price. (I happily run my EZNEC business for
a fraction of what I can make doing consulting, but I don't work for
nothing. Contrary to what seems like a common perception, I'm not
retired but earn my living from EZNEC and consulting.)

I encourage anyone who thinks it's a simple matter to develop a Linux
program of the level of EZNEC to have at it. It's an untapped market.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL