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

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-02-20 09:07-0800 Adam Parkin wrote:

> Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>>> 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.
>> 
>> I believe the "many" in that last sentence is not correct.  Fundamentally,
>> free software developers want to spread freedom through porting their apps
>> to as many platforms as possible.
>
> Well, I think it's important to realize that not all devs are software 
> freedom fighters.  Some release code under OSS licences purely for selfish 
> reasons (gets other people to contribute to the code for free, etc).

You have a good point.  Although most on this list already realize this, we
should occasionally remind ourselves as you have just done that software
freedom has many practical benefits.  In fact, selfish reasons =
"enlightened self interest" means many free software developers will want to
port to windows to encourage windows developer contributions.  We didn't
actually dwell on this benefit beforehand (although it was in the back of my
mind), but indeed after PLplot greatly improved its windows port via CMake
our level of windows developer interest sharply increased with some
substantial code donations (the wxwidgets binding that I mentioned)
benefiting all PLplot platforms as a result.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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