Subject: Re: Cygwin participation threshold
From: Fergus Henderson <[email-masked]>
To: Weiqi Gao <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:23:03 +1100

On 24-Feb-1999, Weiqi Gao <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Windows is too complicated.  It usually takes a sharp individual a long
> time (four years?) to become really proficient in Windows.  And that
> proficiency usually last a very short time (two years).  All of their
> knowledge would have been gained through the continued (and expensive)
> subscription to MSDN.  They usually don't feel compelled to contribute
> to anything.

That doesn't explain why they contribute more to djgpp than to cygwin.

> It's the culture.  Groups of Windows developers would sit around bashing
> Unix.

But that could well explain it.

One thing that might help would be better mingw32 support.
That might encourage people who would otherwise use djgpp
to use cygwin instead.  But I suppose they still wouldn't
be likely to contribute to the winsup stuff.

Someone else also commented that people who use cygwin probably
run Linux when they can, and so don't get much chance to play
around with cygwin.  I think that is another very likely explanation.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <[email-masked]>  |  "Binaries may die
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |   but source code lives forever"
PGP: finger [email-masked]        |     -- leaked Microsoft memo.

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