Message-ID: <58fb98730704010332u223bfb71nd1bbff7be987c05a@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 12:32:03 +0200
From: "Roberto Veiga" <roberto DOT sapiens AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Cygwin1.DLL soon to be Windows Vista only
In-Reply-To: <20070401045338.GA23909@ednor.casa.cgf.cx>
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You are joking, aren't you?

[]s,

Roberto

2007/4/1, Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please AT cygwin DOT com>:
> After some intense discussion with Corinna, we've decided that we will
> soon be removing all support for any version of Windows other than
> Windows Vista 64.
>
> I know that Corinna considers Vista to be the best in a long line of
> Windows operating systems and I'm sure I'll agree as soon as I finally
> get Vista installed.
>
> So, in addition to dropping legacy support for the Windows 9x/Me
> versions, we'll soon be dropping support for all versions of Windows
> NT, Windows XP, and Windows 2003.  In fact, we'll be adding checks for
> all of those OSes so that no one will unintentionally try to run Cygwin
> on anything but Vista.  Attempts to run Cygwin on unapproved systems
> will result in a message followed, five seconds later, by a reboot of
> the system.  Successive attempts to run Cygwin will probably result in
> something more severe than a reboot.  We haven't figured out exactly
> what that will be.  I think it would be sort of funny to wipe out the
> partition and install linux but that would bloat the size of the DLL by
> more than 20%.
>
> Anyway, the last version of Cygwin with support for non-legacy versions
> of Windows will be 1.5.22.
>
> We plan on adding improvements to Cygwin at a pretty rapid clip once we've
> stabilized on Windows Vista.  Contemplated changes are:
>
> 1) A gcc-free version of Cygwin which does not require any compilers (this
> was at the request of Microsoft and it should be doable).
>
> 2) Improvements to d2u to finally squash that CRLF problem:
>
>  d2u --wholedisk --permanent
>
> This command will wipe out every \r on your disk and mark the disk so
> that it is subsequently impossible to have files with the \r character
> in them.
>
> 3) A relaxation of the linux emulation requirements to make it easier to
> port pure Windows programs to Cygwin without forcing the programs to
> understand Linux.  This should result in a massive influx of Windows
> programmers who will contribute useful code that is not hampered by the
> strictures of the user-unfriendly Linux OS.
>
> 4) A --mascot command line option will be automatically understood by
> any program which uses the Cygwin DLL.  It will cause a picture of a
> hippo to be displayed.  (--nomascot will defeat this option)
>
> 5) A relaxation of the rules for package inclusion.  Packages will no
> longer absolutely require maintainers.  Instead, the "upset" program will
> scan the internet for likely windows programs and automatically add
> these to setup.ini.  This will eliminate the huge wall which currently
> exists to impede inclusion of programs to the cygwin release.
>
> 6) A total rewrite of setup.exe to make it less linux-like.  The plan
> is to make setup.exe browser based via ActiveX scripts.
>
> 7) A move away from the GPL into something less restrictive.  Red Hat
> lawyers are working on this now.  The intent is to change the "viral"
> nature of Cygwin's licensing so that programs which link with Cygwin are
> no longer GPLed.  Instead, in keeping with Red Hat's licensing, the
> programs will just be automatically owned by Red Hat.  Red Hat will
> license any Cygwin program back, royalty free, to the program author for
> the period of one year.  It is expected that this arrangement will
> continue indefinitely and it is hoped that this will eliminate all of
> the confusion currently accompanied by the Cygwin's license model.
>
> The new Red Hat slogan for Cygwin will be "All your programs are
> belong to us.  Trust us.  We're not Microsoft."
>
> 8) Addition of a "--explain" option to cygserver which will explain the
> cygserver source code in German, English, or Canadian.
>
> 9) A rewrite of Cygwin's fork code using the advanced Windows Vista
> copy-on-right semantics.  This new interface can be used to emulate
> forking with only the addition of security dialog boxes for every fork,
> once per program.  Once the dialog boxes are dismissed this new
> technology will allow us to copy only the "right" data/code into the
> newly forked process.  We think this will result in quite a change
> for programs which use fork.
>
> 10) More frequent releases of the Cygwin DLL.  We hope to release the
> DLL on either a weekly or a biweekly basis starting in May.
>
> There are many more changes contemplated but I've listed some of the
> more exciting ones above.  If we can do even 100% of all of the things
> we've planned I think that 2007 could be the best year for Cygwin ever!
> --
> Christopher Faylor                      spammer? ->     aaaspam AT sourceware DOT org
> Cygwin Co-Project Leader                                aaaspam AT duffek DOT com
>
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