Re: Emacs vista build failures

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Richard M Stallman wrote:
>     Developers programs might not have an immediate effect, but I believe 
>     the long time aid might be much larger.
>
> I see no reason to think such an effect exists.  Meanwhile, people
> have told me that the fact that Emacs runs on Windows undercut their
> ability to insist on running GNU/Linux at work.

That is a bad effect of course, but I wonder how much impact it really has.

> Without some sort of demonstration I decline to believe that this
> helps us.

It might be difficult to demonstrate but what I am thinking is that if 
more people knows the tools for developing software on/for free system 
they can contribute on their free time. (And in many cases bring 
experience with them from non-free systems.)

One way to look into this question is perhaps to ask people developing 
software that runs on free systems where they have learned it and if it 
has been any help to them that these tools also runs on non-free systems.

At the same time one can ask whether they have got any valuable ideas 
for development when meeting both free and non-free system/software. 
Because such encounters will be more frequent if free software tools 
also runs on non-free systems.