On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 04:36:51PM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > There is a difference between "I have no obligation to answer each and > every message" and "I cannot find a coherent answer to several messages". > > One difference is that the first one is true, and the second one is > false. As you've seen by now, people were looking for something > sinister in a simple delay. > > I know of at least four companies I've worked with/for that *rely* on > gcc and that would switch to Linux/BSD if gcc was not available on > Windows. > > I am surprised by this statement, because in general I don't expect > that very many users would switch to a different operating system just > to use GCC. Nonetheless, I would be interested in talking with them > to see what they say about this. >
What you expect (conveniently) is far from what happens to be reality. In the real world, people need their work done and will take the necessary steps to do so. If work involves cross compilation, as an example, and you provide them with a free compiler (as in gratis) that does that job ok, it will be used. If Linux is a prerequisite to this and that you provide them for free (as in gratis), they will install it. When you write code to make gcc work on windows and endorse it, you tell them that there is no need to switch to Linux to get the work done. You are doing precisely what you blame on BSD, except that we provide just a set of Makefiles, and that you actually wrote code to make sure projects will run on a proprietary system and will be used by a broader public. And no, you will not get to talk to the people I worked with. It is not of any interest for me to send them the average troll when they do not care a tiny bit about discussing FSF/GPL and/or BSD philosophy. Live with it, you do encourage people to use proprietary systems by providing them the tools to get their work done without having to ever touch a free system. Gilles -- Gilles Chehade http://www.evilkittens.org/ http://www.evilkittens.org/blog/gilles/
