Then what does developing the cygwin libraries make you? A serf? A blockbuster?
Also, an inaccuracy in the article:
"Are You a Sharecropper? If you're developing software for the Windows platform, yes. Or for the Apple platform, or the Oracle platform, or the SAP platform, or, well, any platform that is owned and operated by a company. They own the ground you're building on, and if they decide they don't like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you're toast."
This doesn't even make sense to me. The analogy doesn't work. If I code a game made to work in windows 98, Microsoft can not (at this point) block your game from being run at the OS level (aka "taking away land") but really only through suing you to stop the game from being distributed.
Do I have this wrong? This doesn't sound like being a sharecropper, but living next door to a cranky neighbour who might sue you for keeping your lawn unkempt and lowering neighbouring property values.
If I code a game made to work in windows 98, Microsoft can not (at this point) block your game from being run at the OS level (aka "taking away land") but really only through suing you to stop the game from being distributed.
What they can do is put out a service pack (or in the probable case of Longhorn, an entire OS release) that breaks your game. Ideally, you release a patch; the problem is the worst case, where you (the developer) have to go out and get an entire new toolchain (new copy of Visual Studio, etc). Even though update prices are usually modest, you may not want to keep lots of VMWare images on your hard drive, multiple toolchains, etc.
So far, the effect has been minimal: people knew from the start that NT4 wasn't W9x, and things acted differently. However their latest moves are much more bold - Longhorn may be radically different from what we see today.
Unix is as much a collection of behaviors as it is lines of code. Moving from a.out to ELF meant patching and recompiling, sure, but the only investment is time, and in many cases you could do it at your leisure. Commercial software can get EOL'd and you have no choice but to plan your migration (witness the many companies happy with NT4, who are now forced to migrate to W2k or XP).
If developing for windows makes you a sharecropper (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, an inaccuracy in the article:
"Are You a Sharecropper? If you're developing software for the Windows platform, yes. Or for the Apple platform, or the Oracle platform, or the SAP platform, or, well, any platform that is owned and operated by a company. They own the ground you're building on, and if they decide they don't like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you're toast."
This doesn't even make sense to me. The analogy doesn't work. If I code a game made to work in windows 98, Microsoft can not (at this point) block your game from being run at the OS level (aka "taking away land") but really only through suing you to stop the game from being distributed.
Do I have this wrong? This doesn't sound like being a sharecropper, but living next door to a cranky neighbour who might sue you for keeping your lawn unkempt and lowering neighbouring property values.
Re:If developing for windows makes you a sharecrop (Score:4, Insightful)
What they can do is put out a service pack (or in the probable case of Longhorn, an entire OS release) that breaks your game. Ideally, you release a patch; the problem is the worst case, where you (the developer) have to go out and get an entire new toolchain (new copy of Visual Studio, etc). Even though update prices are usually modest, you may not want to keep lots of VMWare images on your hard drive, multiple toolchains, etc.
So far, the effect has been minimal: people knew from the start that NT4 wasn't W9x, and things acted differently. However their latest moves are much more bold - Longhorn may be radically different from what we see today.
Unix is as much a collection of behaviors as it is lines of code. Moving from a.out to ELF meant patching and recompiling, sure, but the only investment is time, and in many cases you could do it at your leisure. Commercial software can get EOL'd and you have no choice but to plan your migration (witness the many companies happy with NT4, who are now forced to migrate to W2k or XP).