Re: Emacs vista build failures

[Óscar Fuentes]

Richard M Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     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.

I was a Windows-only closed-source developer. NTEmacs introduced me to
Free Software. So good was the experience that started to use MinGW and
Cygwin. Inevitably this lead me to GNU/Linux. Today, all my software is
cross-platform and my customers can use it on GNU/Linux, if they wish.

I'm still a Windows closed-source developer. Changing this would mean
the end of my career as computer programmer. None of my customers chose
GNU/Linux, and I all can say is that this is well justified in almost
all cases. However, I still keep my software "GNU/Linux-ready".

NTEmacs is not slowing down my transition to GNU/Linux, because I can't
(fully) go that route. NTEmacs is the responsible of me being a Free
Software advocate... when Free Software makes sense.

So far, the Free Software philosophy is a success when the software is
targeted at hackers (Emacs, gcc, GNU/Linux servers...) and clearly
inferior when targeted at "common" users. IMO, the reason is obvious:
hackers does not understand the needs of common users. And when I say
"inferior" or "needs" I don't mean "user experience" or "features" or
"quality", I mean economics. But you need to think as a businessman to
understand this.

-- 
Oscar