GCC 3.4.0 build failed on interix3

[Christopher Faylor]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 06:46:43PM -0400, Ross Ridge wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>My original objection to Interix was that it was a proprietary add-on
>>to Windows ...
>
>Interix is still a proprietaty add-on to Windows.  According this
>logic, and unlike the logic you were using a few days ago, nothing has
>changed, and so GCC shouldn't be supporting Interix today either.

Ok.  Fair enough.  The words "sale" or "purchase" or "free download"
didn't show up in my last message so you thought you detected drift.  To
repeat: The reason I think this is a non-issue is because Interix is
available as a free download now.  So, you can't make the case that GNU
Tools are helping in the sale of a proprietary add-on.

Perhaps a purist would still be bothered by the fact that Interix is
proprietary, even if it is free, but I thought the free-beerness made it
a non-issue.  Perhaps I am wrong, but that is the point I was trying to
make.

>Richard Kenner wrote
>> There are a lot of people who prefer Windows, but wouldn't have been
>>able to use it if Cygwin or similar tools were not available.  So they
>>*are* examples of additional sales for Windows.
>
>For example, IT managers who prefer Windows over the objections of
>their staff.
>
>Before they bought Interix, Microsoft sales people were using Cygwin as
>their primary means to convince businesses to switch over to Windows NT
>when they couldn't convince them to switch to a pure Windows enviroment.
>Cygwin was much prefered over Interix by Microsoft, because Cygwin was
>better intergrated into the Windows enviroment and was more likely
>to make the companies and their applications dependent on Windows.
>They still recommend Cygwin, along with the MKS Toolkit and Interix, to
>help companies migrate their applications to Windows.  Microsoft quite
>clearly thinks that Cygwin has helped and continutes to help them sell
>copies of Windows.

Ok, if that is true, then I stand corrected.  So Microsoft has been
convincing many customers to go with Windows + cygwin.  Now Microsoft's
customers have the choice between purchasing more proprietary software
(from Microsoft or elsewhere) or with using the free software available
for Cygwin.  I suspect that in many cases, the software provided by
Cygwin is being used instead of non-free software.  So, if what you say
is true Microsoft has been promoting both directly and indirectly
promoting free software.  That's rather interesting.

Regardless, as mentioned, running a free software program like Cygwin on
a proprietary OS is sanctioned by the FSF.  In fact, the FSF itself has
sold Cygwin.  Again, it wasn't ever helping the sale of *Windows* that
was being addressed here, it was the helping the sale of a proprietary
add-on which used gcc.

For the record, I wasn't bothered by U/WIN's availability as a gcc port.
I had absolutely nothing to do with the decision to drop it.  I just
thought that, if U/WIN was being eliminated, there was a good case for
Interix, too.  I was trying to make sure that policy was consistent.

cgf