Rootless Mode is an Important and Needed Feature

[Christopher Faylor]

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 03:36:00PM -0400, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
>Good point Alexander.
>
>On a side note: Why is it that XDarwin has so many people contributing 
>code and features (they seem to have an OpenGL-passthrough system now, 
>which is pretty amazing), while Cygwin/XFree86 has so few contributors? 
> This seems contradictory because Windows is on 95% of desktops while 
>Mac OS X is only on < 1% (~20% of Apple's 5% market share are running 
>Mac OS X).
>
>That question will probably always baffle me.

FWIW, I have always had similar questions about cygwin itself.

And, whenever I voice the question, people always say something on the
order of "It takes people with knowledge of two disciplines, windows and
unix and that is really rare."

Personally, I have other theories about the mindset of people who use
Windows.  While they really have very little say in what they get from
Microsoft or any other major closed-source company, they often
nonetheless feel emboldened to suggest and direct in open source
projects without any need to actually volunteer their time or offer any
real technical understanding.  The theory seems to be that "free
software" means "It is free for me to use and free for me to kvetch
about it".

Maybe it is exactly the fact that Microsoft does not supply you with any
options that puts people in the mindset that their only recourse is to
suggest, pontificate, or whine.  The concept that they could roll up
their sleeves and pitch in is really really foreign.

cgf

"I am not a programmer, but it seems to me..."