Walter leaving and shift to XP.

[Walter Bender]

I certainly don't know enough about Windows to be able to answer your
question from the technical perspective. I do know that to launch an
effort to port to Windows will require resources above and beyond what
are currently available. Is that the best use of resources? There is
an argue to suggest that since so many people are running Windows,
that this would be the most efficient way to reach the most people.
But there are some negatives as well... many of which have been raised
earlier in this thread. Not the least in my mind is one of culture: I
fought long and hard to get the principle of free and open added to
the core principles of OLPC because I believe that (a) there is power
in freedom--it really does make a difference to teachers and learners
to know that they can be first-class citizens in the world of ideas
[it is a contradiction to advocate expression and collaboration but
put up barriers at the same time]; (b) there is efficiency in
freedom--despite all of the deficiencies and all the mistakes, we've
accomplished a tremendous amount in just two years and the potential
to accomplish much much more.

-walter

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 5:24 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> > Considering the complete sentence, it is clear to me that this is a
>  > case of the reporter being confused by technology. We all know that
>  > Sugar could never run on Windows as well it as can run on Linux. The
>  > laptop might run Windows or Linux or both, but not Sugar on Windows.
>
>  Do "we all know" that, really?
>
>  Why couldn't Sugar activities run as well on Windows as they might on
>  Linux?  Windows is a pretty full OS.  Windows has networking,
>  processes, file systems, Python, GNU compilers, etc.  I worked on the
>  GNU compilers, and was rather surprised when one guy (DJ Delorie) put
>  in a large amount of work to make them run on DOS and Windows.  (He was
>  later hired by Cygnus and his port became Cygwin.)
>
>  Is there any *technical* reason why, with significant effort, somebody
>  couldn't port Sugar to run on MS-Windows?
>
>         John
>
>  PS: I'm no fan of Microsoft, or Windows.  For the OLPC or for any
>  other purpose.
>
>
>
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