Mike Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There is nothing "official" about it.
and
> And the "official" part is only in your
> opinion.
My version is the official one. For the lack of any other criteria of official
status, my version is the official one because of all existing post-0.5.0
versions it is the only one that matches the original prc-tools (0.1.0 through
0.5.0) in the mission and purpose statement and overall design.
> It's all "open",
> I thought. That means "anyone" can modify it.
and
> Again, we are not talking about a propietary piece of s/w that needs
> "blessing" to be modified, are we?
Free software gives you the ability to, if you have or want to, go against the
official maintainer and create your own divergent version without his/her
blessing. You must, however, treat it only as such (an unblessed divergent
version) and not challenge the official maintainer. Although the GNU General
Public License doesn't require this, common ethics does.
> But it "IS" the version that works with Windows systems, isn't it?
It is a *binary distribution* for Windows. There is a difference between a
(source) code version and a binary distribution. Nothing prevents you from
building prc-tools-0.6.0 under Cygwin. This is exactly what Com. Marshall did
for his version and what someone else did for version 0.5.0 before.
> As far as I'm concerned prc-tools20 is the only "official"
> windows version.
There is no such thing as the official version for a platform. Every piece of
software has a set of versions, some official, some not. Every version,
official or not, has a set of supported platforms. If the official version does
not support a given platform, that means that the platform in question is not
officially supported for the piece of software in question. There is still no
such things as the official version for that platform.
> Isn't that the zen of
> the thing that you are always touting.
and
> So much for Zen!
No, although people's ability to create unblessed divergent versions is one of
the features of free software, it is not the one that motivates my work on free
software and my vision of its Zen.
--
Michael Sokolov Harhan Engineering Laboratory
Public Service Agent International Free Computing Task Force
International Engineering and Science Task Force
615 N GOOD LATIMER EXPY STE #4
DALLAS TX 75204-5852 USA
Phone: +1-214-824-7693 (Harhan Eng Lab office)
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (ARPA TCP/SMTP) (UUCP coming soon)
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