gnupg 1.0.7 compiled for Windows

[David Picón Álvarez]

--fgmSz1fZ.5XiMkIG0nnxfhpcRy8C.PaU
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi,
Disclaimer: I'm not a developer. I don't claim to be one. I don't claim to
represent developer's views but only my own. I'm not trying to get myself
into a holy war, and I'm not trying to offend anyone or anything. Ditto.

> Sorry for being blunt, but the attitude Eugen Leitl expressed (shared by
> many others) is one of the biggest turnoffs to "outsiders" now looking
> at the free software community as an alternative to the Redmond,

1) I agree with you that this sort of attitude and the results it implies
may be discouraging for end-users and mercatroids. That said, I believe it
is important to consider what free software is about: is it about creating
great, free software that everyone who wants to can use and learn from or is
it about impressing the corporate world? Now, I would say, the first. If
these two objectives were always compatible, I would think that you're
completely right. However, there is a limitted developers pool and a
limitted amount of resources to dedicate to a piece of software. Personally,
I prefare that priority is given to stuff that matters like getting software
which is secure, stable, reliable, can do the job, and includes the wanted
features rather than in compiling binaries for windows.
If there are platform-inherent issues to solve, it is a priority to solve
the general issues before those are dealt with, I would think.


> Washington "beast." Which is doing more to get free software in front of
> the actual *users* and business decisionmakers: (1) telling users who
> don't know (or care) what a compiler is to just go build it themselves,
> or (2) distributing the binaries for use on an OS that (for better or
> for worse) people are actually *using*?

If a user needs to find out about a compiler it's not a tragedy. On the
other hand, if a user does a thorough search on this list's archives, for
example, they are likely to notice that this question doesn't emerge for the
first time, and end up at http://www.nullify.org where pre-compiled MS
binaries can be found.

> Perhaps it's good to remember that the ultimate destination for all
> software, free or not, is on the computer of an *end user*. That person,
> in all likelihood, doesn't much care what Richard Stallman thinks or
> consider Microsoft inherently evil. He or she is going to switch to free
> software (and thus help the movement crawl out of the pizza-stained
> developer's den) because it has some benefit, in costs or features.



If this person doesn't care what RMS thinks about or doesn't consider MS
(let's say proprietary software) as inherently evil, or whatever, why should
we give them prefferential support?

> And I say all this as the author of both an open-source software package
> and an OSI-approved license for that software.

Good. I say this as an extensive free software user. Incidentaly, it is so
that I'm currently using windows, because of personal reasons that I'd
rather not discuss, so it can't be said I'm biased because the issue doesn't
affect me.

> I guess the flames will start now, but I felt it needed to be said...

I hope this didn't come out as a flame. Anyway, these are my thoughts.

--David.




--fgmSz1fZ.5XiMkIG0nnxfhpcRy8C.PaU
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=ALps
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--fgmSz1fZ.5XiMkIG0nnxfhpcRy8C.PaU--