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no FPC Go32v2 maintainer(s) / Unicode kills us all (Announce)

posted by marcov, 01.01.2011, 17:46

> It's not that I don't WANT to help, I'm vaguely willing,
....

> (and doubt) whether FPC devs give a crap about DOS or are even willing to
> cooperate with me.

The whole point is that they don't HAVE to care. They rather get rid of the responsibility and park it with somebody who wants the job. Of course that one must then also look into problems himself.

(and actually they do care, but their agenda's are already full enough, and like me they know if they try to salvage Dos, they'll have to drop something else)

> (freepascal.org's "Contact" doesn't even list Tomas' email, and I'd bet
> some of those are outdated anyways. Should I try to email Pierre? I
> seriously doubt he cares what I think, esp. if even you don't.)
Get on the fpc-devel list.

> > Slowly, win9x is getting in the same category. There is currently some
> > discussion going on about killing off win9x. Or more precisely, just
> work
> > if it is NT only, and see if win9x+MSLU will eat it.
>
> RAR 4.x has already killed off Win9x (and also DOS) for the same reason.
The problem is that win9x has gotten a free ride for say the last 5 years, where users hardly contribute, but lift on the win32 port for NT.

That is also where the same problem as with Dos lies. Without maintainers, almost nothing is doable. E.g. one could simply split the win32 target into a NT and win9x target, if a serious user(or -group) would start working on that win9x target.

That way the NT people wouldn't be bothered with win9x compatibility, and at the same time win9x could continue. But that isn't happening, because people only complain about win9x not working, and only want a quick fix to let it last just another xxx months longer. Same as with Dos, where since 2003 not much more as the bare minimum has been done (and actually not even that, since dos has been broken in many releases)

> But last I heard MSLU was a crappy license (thanks for nothing, MS) and
> Mozilla's (?) reimplementation was only half-baked at best. Anyways, I
> don't have any Win9x machines to test (and dunno where that one of my
> brother's is).
Possible. But it is the only solution to not split the win32 target (requiring reponsibility to be carried by Win9x people, something I don't see happening, they only want to use their old machine somewhat longer, not work for it), and at the same time getting rid of the uneasy marriage that is happening now, and starting to crack (win9x+winNT in one target)

> > The amount of unicode usage is greatly increasing (driven by Lazarus'
> > decision to consider every string utf-8), and the constant win9x hacks
> are
> > getting annoying.
>
> It's a losing battle. It's easier to drop support, deprecate, delete than
> keep afloat.

The problem is not that it is a losing battle. The problem is more that it is not a battle at all. People are only complaining on the "losing" side, nobody is actually fighting (working) to keep it afloat.

Of course it is easy to blame core (since they are always to blame per definition in the minds of users), but the reality is that nobody is interested in Win9x or Dos, except if there are problems. (and they then try to get away with the most minimal fixes possible, or drop the burden on core).

For Dos this situation already exists since 2003, and I don't think this is going to happen for win9x, unless it gets its own target (no NT marriage anymore) and own maintainers.

And it takes only one person, like I kept the FreeBSD port afloat for all these years with only one or two regular bugreporters.

> And like I said, RAR dropped DOS too (though still sells "old"
> version 3.93, for now), so I hope FPC doesn't do the same. (RAR apparently
> now supports Win32, Win64, Linux32, Linux64, Mac OS X, FreeBSD.)

While the dos and win9x are both orphans maintainerwise, the situation is different in that dos at least is its own platform.

So Dos doesn't require people not interested in X working on X compatibility. (well it does of course, for general features, but on a much smaller scale) IOW if you are interested in Windows NT, can't test anymore on win9x, it is very hard to consider win9x in anything you do, every @&^%$@ day. That nerves people.

If this isolation (and the modest but important work of Giulio, Tomas and Pierre) wouldn't have been there for Dos, and Dos would have coexisted within a target with another OS, Dos would have been killed off ages ago.

> All anybody cares about is Windows and/or POSIX (read: usually Linux only) > at most!, very sad. If we can't all get along, what good are we? (Obviously
> not very.)
Well, I think Mac OS X actually gets more contributions than Windows.

But caring is not enough. Work needs to be done, and experience needs to be built, and that needs a dedicated maintainer. And that's where the dos and win9x problems lie.

Actually Windows (and then I mean say XP+)has gigantic problems too. The user/development ratio is very high (many users, in proportion only a very little amount of devels). In fact Windows has no dedicated maintainer, and the windows specific work is done by patches from users mostly, and bits and pieces by core.

If for some reason Windows NT as a platform stumbles, the same fate as Dos and win9x awaits for the same reasons. (as soon as it is legacy, nobody seems to want to work on these platforms anymore, contrary to e.g. OS X and Linux/FreeBSD)

Currently these problems are hidden by the fact that mainly commercial Lazarus users pick up the tab by heavily debugging the windows platform and providing patches. But if this activity stops, Windows as a platform will hurt badly too.

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