Re: Native Win32 port - PLEASE!

On 26/03/2004 10:28 Andrew Mayo wrote:
> PLEASE .... can we have the native Win32 port SOON.
>
> It will totally and utterly hurt Microsoft in a very important area to
> have this port. Why?
>
> Well, many of you will know that MS give away a cut-down version of
> SQL Server (MSDE) and this is bundled with a *lot* of Win32 apps.
>
> Now, MSDE is pretty good, though it is a nightmare to upgrade, for
> various reasons - but there are fishhooks in the license agreement
> that worry a lot of people - particularly, a clause about replication
> that could be interpreted in ways that would suddenly require users to
> pay MS large wads of cash.
>
> And MSDE is deliberately crippled; five concurrent users, max 2G
> database size.
>
> Many vendors (including the one I work for) would be very very very
> interested in looking at PostgreSQL as an alternative BUT it NEEDS to
> run natively on Windows (not via Cygwin)

If you read the list archives for hackers and win32, I think you'll see
that a non-Cygwin port is what is being undetaken right now. As with
pretty-well all OSS the limiting factor is available resources. An
enlightened company which would make money on the back of a win32 port
would obviously offer to donate programmer (as in _experienced_ C/win32
rather than junior/novice) time to help the port along.
> If it did, I can see real inroads being made into 'mindspace' here and
> a huge increase in PostgreSQL usage - it would become ubiquitous as a
> 21st century database - and porting to Win32 therefore helps, not
> hinders, the open source movement.
>
> So can I quietly beg the Win32 group to expedite this port. I believe
> you will be utterly astonished at the demand. Please.....

I think everyone in the core and advocacy teams is well aware of this as
are most of the other mailing-list regulars.

--
Paul Thomas
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