'Evening, Gabriel! Gabriel Striewe <[email protected]> wrote: > [-- text/plain, encoding quoted-printable, charset: UTF-8, 38 lines --]
> Hello all, > Python (if I am not right, I am sure there exist other examples of this > case) as of now seems to still depend on Visual C being compiled on > Windows and still causing problems being compiled with MinGW. Is that really true? Aren't there any free C compilers native to Windows? Hasn't GCC been targeted at Windows native? > Now, assuming that providing open source software on Windows doesn't > give Windows an unfair advantage having all this good software > available on it, but rather to the contrary, makes it easier?for > Windows users making the transition to Linux, .... Which I believe would actually be the case. As well as making it easier for free software programmers to hack Windows, thus making it more of a free-for-all. > ...., since all the software they started using on Windows (open source > software, of course) is available on Linux, too, doesn't this mean > Python is not as free as it could be? Perhaps, in theory. If this particular lack of freedom were ever to bite some day, I suspect it would be fixed in days rather than weeks. > What if one day Visual C in its license forbids using it to compile > open source software? Is that completely impossible? I suspect it wouldn't happen in practice, even if it's possible in theory. It would signify Microsoft waving the white flag of surrender. Also, who'd buy a compiling system for several hundred euros, were it to restrict the licensing of their own programs? > On the Gnu website there is a list of completely free linux > distributions. Would this website be also a place for a list of > software which > a) exists on Linux as well as Windows, making the transition to a good > operating system possible That'd be a delicate suggestion, since it would, to some extent, be advocating the use of proprietary software, or at least look a bit like it. > b) can (on Windows) be compiled using a completely free toolchain (that > is, MinGW) Can't all free software written in C be built with MinGW? > Any hints whether such a site / interest group already exists are > greatly appreciated. I don't know of any. > Thanks > Gabriel Striewe -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
