In my experience, one of the historical reasons for the lack of high-quality free technical software for Windows goes back to OS/2.
In the late '80's many academic groups embraced OS/2 and developed software for it. However, Microsoft and IBM fell out over various aspects of Windows compatibility, drivers were hard to come by, and support for the newest computational features of the processors was slow to materialize. Most of this work in academia was eventually rewritten in l/unix, which places a high priority on support for computation. (Linux was adopted by the US National Center for Supercomputing Applications as the development platform for cluster computing some years ago, guaranteeing linux support for high-end technical applications.) Much of the best free technical software is developed by academia, often supported by competitive research contracts. The negative impact of the OS/2 experience on careers of both students and faculty has meant that we look for an O/S with an open and predictable development path that will not leave us high and dry. Experience with OS/2 and Windows suggests that commercial software is not necessarily the best path for many of us. We develop software to support our research and teaching needs, and share it with the community as we share other knowledge we produce. Other free software is developed by hobbyists. Those who pay for the Microsoft products that enable use of Windows features ask to be repaid, so their software is generally not free. If you want Windows software, you need to support the additional associated costs. As Chris has already said, there is a perfectly good path to a working version of Xcircuit: run linux. Ditto spice, by the way. Best, -Phyllis Phyllis R. Nelson, PhD Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Co-Director, Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Materials Design California State Polytechnic University, Pomona prnelson at csupomona dot edu ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chris Albertson [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 9:28 AM To: XCircuit development discussion Cc: Ruida Yun Subject: Re: [Xcircuit-dev] Please provide a downloadable native Xcircuit for Windows users I can't speak for anyone involved in xcircuit development but in general one problem is that very few people who do programming for free, as a hobby have a Windows system. For the most part, there are exceptions, the only way people will program under Windows if is they get paid. People tend to do only what they enjoy when working on their own time. I think this explains why in general there is poor support for free software under Window. That said, you only need one person to compile XCiruit for you. Your best option is to simply install Linux on your computer and then lack of windows support would be moot, you would no longer care. Yes there may be a few Windows programs you still need to run but VMware makes it easy to have both OSes running at the same time. On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 8:59 PM, Ruida Yun <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tim, > > With the host site for Xcircuit/Win32 went down, there is no place to > get a updated native Xcircuit for windows user. -- ===== Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ Xcircuit-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.opencircuitdesign.com/mailman/listinfo/xcircuit-dev _______________________________________________ Xcircuit-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.opencircuitdesign.com/mailman/listinfo/xcircuit-dev
