Bibledit has been designed from the ground up to be cross platform.
To make something cross platform it is easiest to develop it on Linux. This is because porting something from Linux to Windows is much easier than the other way round. Bibledit is developed on Linux, not so much for this reason as well to have translation software in Linux, yet the fact that it is programmed on Linux makes it easier to port to other platforms such as Macintosh, OLPC and Windows.
To make porting easy Bibledit uses libraries that can be ported too. It uses, for example, the Gtk libraries, and the sqlite library, both of which can easily be ported to other architectures.
The developer has to resist using libraries that make programming so much easier and make the gui look better, yet cannot be ported to other platforms. Therefore Bibledit uses a limited number of libraries, and rather does without eye candy than having a lot of bells and whistles and be tied to one platform only.