[Discuss] Essentially all free apps will soon be available onWindows

[Adam Parkin]

Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> We all have the big delete key if we find some poster is consistently 
> boring
> on about windows too much. :-)

WINDOWS blah blah WINDOWS blah WINDOWS WINDOWS blah blah... =8-p

> OTOH, it is nice to be on topic again so thanks for making that happen.

True true.

> maintained.  That home-brew windows build system was extraordinarily
> limited in results and was difficult to maintain.  Our windows port
> was a second-class citizen, and our windows developer could get any help
> to overcome that problem.

It is actually quite remarkable how common of a problem this is with OSS 
projects developed under Linux, so I hope you're right that CMake can 
help to alleviate this.  However, while part of the problem is 
tool-related, I think it's fair to say that another part of the problem 
is the "well I use Linux, the source is available, so why should *I* 
port it to Windows?" mentality of many FOSS devs.  Of course it goes 
both ways, it's not uncommon to find FOSS projects developed under 
Windows that don't have Mac/Linux ports for the same reasons (ie - 
nontechnical ones).


George Farris wrote:
>> On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 20:36 -0800, Adam Parkin wrote:
>>
>>> This isn't a Windows-only problem, try running a old version of Red
>>> Hat
>>> or Mandrake and see how much support you get.
>>
>>
>> Well that is just the point.  You can get support for it, there are lots
>> of people around that know about those old distros and the source code
>> is available. 

Yes there are lots of Red Hat/Mandrake/Old Distro of Choice users out 
there that you can consult with.  Just like there are lots of old 
Windows 3.1/95/98/Me/2K/etc users out there who are willing to help 
those in need.  I meant more along the lines of "official" support which 
is what I took your original comment to refer to (ie - MS doesn't 
support versions of Windows prior to XP, and support for it is ending soon).

Although absolutely, the source being available is a plus over the 
Windows/Mac world.

>> Just out of curiosity, <politely> you seem to be a die hard Windows
>> user, why are you on this list? </politely>

As has been pointed out before on here, while this list is called the 
Victoria *LINUX* Users Group, it is very much more of a Victoria *OPEN 
SOURCE* Users Group, and while I am not a big Linux user (although I 
certainly have uses for Linux distros, such as the SystemRescueCD 
distro) and I am primarily a Windows user (although I don't think it's 
fair to call me a "die-hard"), I am very much a FOSS person, hence I 
take part in this mailing list.


Noel Burton-Krahn wrote:
> As for the zealotry: lighten up!  

I am reminded of this comic strip:

http://www.xkcd.com/c198.html

> Remember, open source is bigger than just Linux.

Well said.
-- 
--
Adam Parkin
E-mail: pzelnip at gmail.com
----------------------
Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our 
technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.	

	-- Peter Singer