On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 03:36:00PM -0400, Harold L Hunt II wrote: >Good point Alexander. > >On a side note: Why is it that XDarwin has so many people contributing >code and features (they seem to have an OpenGL-passthrough system now, >which is pretty amazing), while Cygwin/XFree86 has so few contributors? > This seems contradictory because Windows is on 95% of desktops while >Mac OS X is only on < 1% (~20% of Apple's 5% market share are running >Mac OS X). > >That question will probably always baffle me.
FWIW, I have always had similar questions about cygwin itself. And, whenever I voice the question, people always say something on the order of "It takes people with knowledge of two disciplines, windows and unix and that is really rare." Personally, I have other theories about the mindset of people who use Windows. While they really have very little say in what they get from Microsoft or any other major closed-source company, they often nonetheless feel emboldened to suggest and direct in open source projects without any need to actually volunteer their time or offer any real technical understanding. The theory seems to be that "free software" means "It is free for me to use and free for me to kvetch about it". Maybe it is exactly the fact that Microsoft does not supply you with any options that puts people in the mindset that their only recourse is to suggest, pontificate, or whine. The concept that they could roll up their sleeves and pitch in is really really foreign. cgf "I am not a programmer, but it seems to me..."
