gEDA-user: Re: Gedda-user: Building Gedda under Windows

[marvindickens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Saturday 05 March 2005 21:48, Dave McGuire wrote:

>    Well...Windows is a proprietary product of poor quality that is
> largely incompatible with 90% of the rest of the stuff out there, and
> it's being phased out in lots of organization.  That's fact, not
> emotion...though I must say I'm happy about it. :)

I agree with everything you have said - at least to some extent. 

1.) The registry is primarily used to obsfucate application API's and hooks
      into the OS. This is a proprietary feature.

2.) Programming for windows compatibility means writing some code that only 
      works in windows. The best and most well known example is file access
      I/O. This is a proprietary feature.

3.) Windows has, with rare exception, lost the data center war. Further, 
      windows lost the enterprise server war before it even started which
      should have been a clue to a lot of IT professionals prior to the data
      center war. However, windows has done well in the medium and low end
      market, if from nothing else, from the perspective of the number of
      installs in small and mid-sized work groups.

4.) Embedded windows is a joke. Nobody takes it seriously with the exception
     of Palm style devices. 

Anybody who has been in this business for more than 10 years could go on and 
on ...  Even so, windows still owns the most important ground in IT: The 
desktop. Any OS, at any time, can own every other position in the IT 
paradigm, but if it does not own the desktop, it lost the war.

Perhaps, the question is, are you interested in attracting users to gEDA or
attracting desktops? It seems to me that if your serious about attracting 
desktops, you've got to have something enticing. In my mind, gEDA is 
enticing. In this senario, you don't port. OTOH, are you interested in 
attracting users to gEDA and not attracting desktops, you port. Personally, I 
belive it is in the best interest of gEDA to port. Leave the desktop wars to 
the kernel hackers and the distro maintainers and worry about our own back 
yard.


Best regards

Marvin Dickens