Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Message-Id: <200304031528.h33FSFIj611818@pimout3-ext.prodigy.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;
  charset="iso-8859-1"
From: Tim Prince <timothyprince AT sbcglobal DOT net>
Reply-To: tprince AT computer DOT org
To: Steve Coleman <steve DOT coleman AT jhuapl DOT edu>,
   Randall R Schulz <rrschulz AT cris DOT com>
Subject: Re: Big Brother is Real
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 07:28:14 -0800
Cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
References: <5 DOT 2 DOT 0 DOT 9 DOT 2 DOT 20030401082203 DOT 02e42c30 AT pop3 DOT cris DOT com> <5 DOT 2 DOT 0 DOT 9 DOT 2 DOT 20030401095832 DOT 028ac2d8 AT pop3 DOT cris DOT com> <3E8C4B24 DOT 9040007 AT jhuapl DOT edu>
In-Reply-To: <3E8C4B24.9040007@jhuapl.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

On Thursday 03 April 2003 06:54, Steve Coleman wrote:
> Randall R Schulz wrote:
> > I think we have to work with the legal system, not try to subvert it.
> > Microsoft has a right to set the licensing terms it wants. We have a
> > right to tell them to go to hell. Currently however, and as you note,
> > the power relationship is highly skewed. It ain't easy to "just say
> > no" to Microsoft.
>
> And in some cases you can't say "no"!
>
> A long time ago (showing my age here - lol) when I worked for NASA, I
> first cut my teeth on Cygwin out of desperation to get my job done on a
> Wintel box. The very fact that it did not possess anything even close to
> resembling real POSIX was a constant thorn in my side on a daily basis.
> At the time I was a representative to the X/Open organization and was
> heavily involved in the system benchmarking and conformance testing to
> ensure that all equipment supplied on several large contracts adhered to
> the X/Open standards. That is until the M$ "legal suites" showed up in
> force and muscled there way in through legal threats. Can you imagine
> that? NASA, as big of a government organization as it is, being muscled
> and pushed around by Microsloths lawyers to accept Windows as an X/Open
> complient operating system? Without Cygwin Windoze would never even come
> close to being X/Open complient, and Cygwin at that point was still in
> its infant stages of development. 
Lack of cygwin support has impeded the market penetration of Windows XP64, 
but it seems Microsoft would rather lose out to linux and HPUX than let their 
customers run cygwin.  It may be they don't understand how many customers 
depend on cygwin, which is their fault too, since they don't support those 
customers, just collect the fees and forget them.

-- 
Tim Prince

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/