Simon Cooke wrote: >"He might be attempting to make the win32 version better than the others"?
>SO WHAT? Oh no... that's a Microsoft tactic, isn't it, so there /can't/ be anything wrong with it... If you're wondering what I'm babbling on about, it might happen to have something to do with an OS feature which was fully implemented in Office just *one* day after the standard was announced. (OLE, was it? I can't really remember...) Oh, and Microsoft didn't let DR DOS programmers have any betas of MS DOS, did they? I suppose that once you have the majority of the market share for operating systems, and most of those customers use Office, you've got a license to print money, really. >1. He's still working on it. He really should consider releasing the source code whilst he's working on it, so that the Linux and DOS versions have a chance to catch up. >2. It's under GPL; therefore it'll be released as source code anyway, so you >can do a backport if you like. If he doesn't release it whilst he's working on it, that will take longer, and the Win32 version will be better for longer. I also think that Linux programmers shouldn't go off and improve programs for long periods of time without releasing the code. They don't, though. >3. It's his time and effort. It's up to him how he spends it. As you'll have >the source, you can spend the time backporting it if you like. That's true. I'm not going to argue with that. But he *could* release the source code after getting the basics done. >4. The only person who knows what he's doing on it is Simon himself. That's the problem. At least a todo list and some changelogs would be better than nothing. >And heaven forbid that I should take Simon's Win32 port, and add a debugger >API to it, and have my win32 assembler system talk to it through that. After >all, it wouldn't work on Linux. So we can't do it! >"Then again, Windows programmers are all alike -- they've got no respect for >other platforms." >Sounds like I could say the same about Stuart Brady... no respect for other >platforms. What the hell are you going on about? I've got no respect for MS DOS and Windows *only* programmers (and that includes myself a few years ago) -- not "other platforms". Then again, I suppose "other platforms" means Windows to any Microsoft employee, because the only OSes they've ever heard of are Windows and Linux. And, from what I've seen on CSS, Gate's didn't even mention Linux or /any/ non-intel platforms in his book. Try telling me that Microsoft aims to release programs on as many operating systems as possible without lying. And without using strange definitions of "as many operating systems as possible". I /do/ have respect for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Amiga, Sam, Spectrum, Atari, Macintosh, Irix, Solaris (does MS still use this for hotmail?), BeOS, RiscOS, EPOC32, GNU Hurd, and <insert non-MS operating system here> users. If they use Windows as well as one of these (as I do), they're not quite as bad. I'm still lame for using Windows, though. I respect the fact that people may want to use DOS -- and I will always release my source code so that people can port it to other operating systems. Microsoft on the other hand... hmm... Ever heard of the DR-DOS test? And what's this FUD thing that I keep hearing about? >Why not just wait and see what happens? >Also: the DSK format has NOT been modified. It'll still be the same. There >will, however, be ANOTHER format that can correctly represent >protected/non-standard disks. The current format has no concept of sector >addressing, it doesn't know about different length sectors. So it can handle >standard disks, and that's it. That's not sufficient. Fair enough. Btw, I'm /really/ sorry for flaming Si Owen... Aley had just pissed me off a bit by flaming me directly for "not helping" when I had better things to do. I'm still a bit annoyed now. I do, however, urge Si Owen to release the code, no matter how buggy or incomplete it is. I was under the impression that he was waiting until he'd got the basics working first, but he seems to be well past that stage, if he's thinking about disk image formats. Have you got any good reason not to release it, Si? If you think that it's incomplete... If we all followed that logic, OSS wouldn't exist, ID would never have finished a game, Microsoft would never release anything (not that they ever do (joking, Simon)), chip manufactures would never finish their designs, and to put it simply, nothing would /ever/ be done on time, if at all. I'm just asking you: where _exactly_ are you going to draw the line, Si? Not releasing the source code when developing is something that simply isn't done with OSS. Until now, anyway. -- Stuart Brady
