• "Write once, suck everywhere" is an excellent line. 

    I'm on the other end on the portability issue.  We run mostly software purchased from other companies and most of the problems we run into can be traced (in my opinion) to their attempts to achieve portability - ultimately at our expense. 

    I'm convinced that we are the only shop running one of our larger apps on SQL Server.  Not a single where clause in the entire application.

    I think if customers wisened up and purchased software that was blatantly optimized for a particular environment, perhaps that would swing the tendency to shoot for portability.