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OSS on Windows the Next Big Thing?
Lam1969 writes "Linux geeks and Microsoft have similar interests, says Computerworld: They both are interested in seeing open-source software succeed. Linux geeks admit that the open source OS isn't necessarily a better platform for important applications, and Microsoft recognizes that many of its customers are using open-source applications, and doesn't want to alienate them." From the article: "Faced with the allure of inexpensive open-source applications among its core customer base of small to midsize businesses, Microsoft has toned down its rhetoric. 'It's a myth that open-source and Windows can't work together. Customers just aren't religious about these things,' said Ryan Gavin, a director of platform strategy for Microsoft."
I actually believe that's one of the tenets of the Open Source Definition.
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
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I agree - I believe 9 and 10 are most relevent. As with the prior posts regarding the projects asking "Please do not port to Windows" - in a sense they are undermining the spirit of OSS.
/. readers would be all over it about how Windows/Microsoft is trying to edge out Linux and OSS as it was not true OSS.
If someone wrote an OSS app for Windows and stated "Please do not port to Linux",
Dear Sir or Madam,
I would humbly like to bring to your attention the fact that in most English dialects of which I am aware, proper nouns such as "English" or "German" are capitalized. I do hope you do not take offense, as I am merely attempting to inform you of something of which you may not be aware.
Sincerely yours,
-DeviantQ-
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
Yes, but you have VisualStudio. That investment is a significant barrier to many wouldbe OSS developers and their community of contributors. Sure, you *could* get an OSS compiler, but they are a PITA to get up and running. And you don't get proper documentation. This makes Windows OSS unfriendly. On the other hand, when you run Linux or *BSD, everyone gets the toolchain, headers, libraries, and documentation right out out of the box. Anyone can grab some source, make some changes to the code, and recompile if necessary. That is OSS friendly.
Also because of the lack of developer tools out of the box with Windows, there is no advantage to running OSS for most people. If I don't have the toolchain to recompile the source, the fact that it is OSS is moot. Might as well be closed source freeware.
Here is a little anecdote which demonstrates the OSS unfriendliness of Windows: I was having a problem with the MySQL ODBC client in Windows. There is an outstanding bug that was preventing my school from doing some very important MS Access -> MySQL queries. I managed to track down an unofficial patch to the ODBC client. Great, I thought, it is open source. I can just download the source, apply the patch, and recompile. But wait, I needed to get the Qt libraries too! I downloaded a trial version of that.A few hours later of dicking around with that, I was read to try to recompile the client. Well, turns out that the MySQL ODBC client is a Visual Studio 6 project. I don't have VS6. I downloaded VisualStudio 2005 Express (or whatever it is) hoping it would be compatable. It wasn't. Ok, well, then had to try to get it to work with mingw. So I spent a few hours trying to get that environment setup. Eventually I had to turn over the task to a friend who has a little more experience with Windows source code. He eventually got things to build, but it wasn't easy. Keep in mind, I'm no newb to compiling software. I've just never done it on Windows. Totally OSS unfriendly.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
It's a bunch of crap anyway. They act like the P-languages are the only options, when all along people have been developing dynamic web content using everything from bourne shell to objective C.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"