Public Domain Python

Grant Griffin g2 at seebelow.org
Fri Sep 15 03:36:26 EDT 2000


Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
...
> I've been doing real-time embedded software for 15+ years, and I just
> finished my first project using 100% open-source development tools.  My
> experience is that open source tools completely outclass commercial tools in
> every respect.  Better tools, better service, better documentation.

Evidently you've never tried to run CygWin on Windows. <wink>

If you live in the Unix world, I don't doubt what you say, but my
experience running GNU software overall on Windows has been extremely
poor.  The reason for this is neatly explained at
http://www.boswa.com/buskware/buskware.html:

"Free Software is a nice idea, once you get past all the silliness about
it being a moral imperative. Everyone wants better software, and we
programmers want a look at the code.  However, following the practices
of Free Software puts software production out on an island, isolated
from the rest of the economy. Software is produced for the producers,
and the users have nothing to contribute and no control (unless they are
also software producers).  Any consideration of the end users is an act
of pure charity."

Users of Windows currently are the largest single category of software
users, yet "free software" (in the GNU sense) does not cater to them
whatesover.  Why?  Because "free software" (in the GNU sense) is written
for producers, and those producers mostly use some form of Unix.

"free-software"-is-free-in-the-"free-to-ignore-users"-sense-ly
   y'rs,

=g2
p.s.  Hi Grant!
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
Publisher of dspGuru                           http://www.dspguru.com
Iowegian International Corporation	      http://www.iowegian.com



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