How do you think this will help OUR cause? Because more developers have
access to GNU tools?
Yes. Even if those developers do not migrate to GNU/Linux, they are still
using more free software, which is positive.
Those developers can develop on GNU/Linux by itself, why does it need to be
done from within Windows? If it is truly bit-for-bit separate, why not just
use GNU/Linux?
Well, that is my point: they can start their migration in this way. Free
software on Windows that exists as well on GNU/Linux eases the migration to
GNU/Linux. Do you think Firefox, LibreOffice, Pidgin, GIMP, Emacs ... work
against the free software movement because they run on Windows?
Do you think these developers have no idea that this software exists??
I do. I am a professor in the best computer science department in Brazil. I
teach the POSIX text processing commands
(http://dcc.ufmg.br/~lcerf/slides/mdaX.pdf with X = 3..6) at the beginning of
a course only taken by students who are close to graduate. Most of them use
Windows on their machines. They have never heard of those commands. Many do
not even know Shell basics (like the existence of auto-completion, the fact
that short options can be combined, how to escape special characters, etc.).
They often have just used the Shell to type 'gcc *.c' in the first
programming courses (on the university computers) and then started using an
IDE.
The only way you can 'convert' these developers to GNU is to bring it to them
to use on Windows???
I have not written that it is the only way. But I truly believe more free
software on Windows makes more migration to GNU/Linux (as long as the said
software exists on GNU/Linux too).
Unless you are just being a contrarian, it is hard to conceive why you would
take the drastic step of not using a cell phone in the name of not being
tracked, but trust MS not to track the development done on its new platform.
I do not trust Microsoft.
If Windows users end up replacing proprietary software with free software
(such as GNU utilities), that makes less proprietary software that can abuse
them. Windows will still abuse them of course. That is why I hope they
migrate to GNU/Linux, a migration eased by the fact that they will already be
familiar with some of our programs.
If you don't think MS is trustworthy, you should not trust them to host GNU.
GNU running on Windows does not mean in any way that Microsoft controls GNU.
Many GNU packages have run on Windows for many years. GIMP and Emacs for
example.
