You can't exactly compare cpanel/plesk to an irc client though because a) cpanel/plesk is a b2b (business to business) business model which is generally the most common way software is sold for the linux environment; cost is not passed to the consumer, it's exchanged with a corporate entity where there is an expectation of profit to recoup the cost of the software, so it's more acceptable to charge in that case.. and b) there are a plethora of free irc clients on linux and no pay-to-use ones (that I know of) which would make mIRC stick out like a greedy sore thumb. He actually has a very good point. The amount of registrations that Khaled would get from Linux users would likely be low enough not to be cost-effective. Of course, that's not a reason not to port an app since there could be popularity benefits, but again, the popularity is likely to be stunted heavily by the shareware aspect. Why use mIRC when another UI app like XChat is free? It might not be as powerful but it's surely good enough for IRC. And I'm sure some XChat power-users would say XChat is more powerful than mIRC, just like irssi users. It's a pretty saturated market, and there's really very little gain besides appeasing the 10 or 12 ex-Windows users with dual-boot linux machines that are already used to mIRC.
