problems with XFree

[Harold L Hunt II]

Dennis Foreman wrote:
> Harold,
> Since you admit to having to play with addresses, could you PLEASE not send
> postings to me twice. I am now getting ONE from the LIST and ANOTHER direct,
> for YOUR replies to my postings.
> 
> Since you deprecated my use of your personal email address, I have no
> recourse but to post my reply here. After this, I will remain silent, use
> what's here and take my lumps.

No problem.  Your message was unclear as to whether it was intentionally 
sent off-list. You seemed to blame Outlook for your troubles later in 
the message, so I went ahead and cc'd cygwin-xfree.

> 
> If freeware was supposed to stop the incompatibilities across multiple
> incarnations of UNIX, it has failed. Code that works on one Linux fails on
> another (see postings to pthreads & LEDA lists), code that works on LINUX
> fails on SunOS or AIX. I don't see any improvement to the end user.  My days
> as an active programmer are over. The option of contributing assumes I know
> something about the internals of "UNIX". I don't. And I don't want to
> either. I am now taking time to enjoy my family (as you want to enjoy
> yours). I do however occasionally need to delve into the "UNIX" environment,
> so there are some tools I use that may not be commercially available or
> which I am directed to use by others.
> 

With open-source and free-software you have two choices:
1) Take what you get
2) Don't take what you get

Unless, of course, you are willing to contribute.

As for knowledge of how UNIX works... I had no knowledge when I started 
working on this project and I still have hardly any knowledge.  However, 
I am able to read the docs and the source to learn what I need on a 
daily basis.  Anyone can easily contribute to this project in less than 
a week, if not a single day.

> Will the REAL UNIX please stand up?  There are MANY arguments for/against
> any specific version. I don't really care. I just want code that's easy to
> use, works and runs as documented. Look what happened to OS/2. Great
> capabilities, lousy documentation, hard to use by novices. Look at MSWins:
> fair abilities, decent (not great) docs and REALLY easy to use for novices
> doing common things. Look who has the market share! How many PC's come with
> ANY version of Linux as the default?
> 

A valid observation, but you forgot one thing: we are not paid to do this.

> BTW, since Solaris came first, why not emulate what they had? And make it
> better.
> 

[Smoke billows from Harold's keyboard as he quickly rewrites 20 years of 
open-source and free-software to be compatible with Solaris, because 
Dennis Foreman thought it would be a neat idea.]  Nice idea, but you 
will have to work on that one yourself.

> regards,
> D. J. Foreman, Ph. D.
> Dept of Computer Science
> Binghamton University
> website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman

Harold