[Mingw-cross-env-list] Re: Mingw-w64 thoughts (was OSX 10.6 workarounds)

[Volker Grabsch]

Tony Theodore <address@hidden> schrieb:
> Is there much interest in win64 applications at the moment?
> Your thoughts.

While my answer is technically "Yes", there are political
and moral issues I'd like to discuss with the whole group
of Mingw-cross-env users and developers. To the point, the
main question is:

    Should we really do that?

Since the beginning of this project I had mixed opinions
about Windows porting. On the one hand, you increase your
userbase this way, and you help users who must use Windows
for some reason. On the other hand, you're putting much
work into Windows portability which essentially just helps
a monopolist.

As a starting point, I ask everyone to skim through the
following documents before engaging in the discussion.
They provide views from many different directions and
cover almost all important arguments:

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft.html
    http://www.fefe.de/nowindows/
    http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html
    http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/faq/main.php#9

    (Please complement this list if you feel there's an
     important document missing here.)

My current answer to this moral dilemma is:

  1) I trust you, the developers who use Mingw-cross-env, to make
     the right strategic decision for your projects. Mingw-cross-env
     ports just libraries. It's you who port the actual applications.

  2) I remove any library whose author doesn't want it to be ported
     to Windows, even though the license wouldn't forbit porting:
     http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/mingw-cross-env/rev/35b9dcbe9daf

  3) At least I help _developers_ to get away from Windows. Helping
     _users_ to get away from Windows, if they want, is a different
     battle.

However, the "World Domination 201" article suggests that this
might apply only to win32, not win64.

In the past, I wasn't able to discuss that issue with a big
audience. But luckily, the Mingw-cross-env project grew, so
now I do have an great audience to ask:

What do you think about porting software to Windows in general?
What do you think about supporting win64 in addition to win32?

A penny for your thoughts.


Greets,

    Volker

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Volker Grabsch
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