From: J. G. <jg-...@jg...> - 2004-01-20 22:29:59
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Hi Ed, >> >Thats difficult, why don't you encourage vendors to supply g++ libs, as >> >well as the typical MSVC, Borland etc then? You could even offer to do >> >the compiling and testing of them. > > ... and if the source is closed? I understand the want for vendors > to be open source, but in the short term to medium term - and maybe/probably > the long term, this isn't going to happen. Not necessarily open source, or even free software. Supporting gcc mingw users would be a start I think. > And to port to any given compiler, it takes a business case. Which - > given the small market share of mingw on win32 is not going to happen. > > For cross-platform products it might be easier to justify the expense > (since it would be smaller) but for the majority of the APIs out there, > forget it. Thats why I suggested he offer to help, might even get some ??? for it :) Perhaps if he offers to do the initial work they would maintain it after that point. He could provide patches and automake/autoconf scripts for them. Although this could be considerable effort to convince them to accept "outside help". Although if he explained that the alternative would be a group of people developing a free equivalent library they may consider that maintaining their market share on mingw is more important to them. Just ideas anyway :) I would be interested to hear if anyone had success in this predicament. Kind regards JG |