If customers prefer to run bug tracking software internally, then you are giving up a lot of customers by only offering external hosted solutions. If customers prefer one stack to another for internal solutions, then you are giving up a lot of customers by saying you only work on PHP or some other stack. If you just look at Joel's decision to write in something compiled to different stacks that can be run internally from a technical perspective, yeah, it sucks. But if it doubles the number of people who will buy your solution, then it may not suck from a business perspective.
Software is all about spending a fixed amount to produce it and then selling it over and over and over. If you double that fixed amount and double the over and over and over, you doubled your profits. Writing once and compiling to two things is less work than writing the same product in two different code bases as well. That sounds good and ignores things like buying a magazine ad becomes more efficient because more people who see the ad are potential customers.
As an engineer, I sure as hell wouldn't want to work on a system written in Wasabi. But as a business person, or an employee getting equity or options, it might make sense.
Software is all about spending a fixed amount to produce it and then selling it over and over and over. If you double that fixed amount and double the over and over and over, you doubled your profits. Writing once and compiling to two things is less work than writing the same product in two different code bases as well. That sounds good and ignores things like buying a magazine ad becomes more efficient because more people who see the ad are potential customers.
As an engineer, I sure as hell wouldn't want to work on a system written in Wasabi. But as a business person, or an employee getting equity or options, it might make sense.