Re: GTK+3/Win32 : looking for help

["C. Thomas Stover" <cts thomasstover com>]

On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:08:24 +0200, Tarnyko wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> It may have been obvious to anybody following the releases, but I
> severely lack the free time (hence the ability) to work on GTK+3 for
> Win32, for some months now. So I am basically asking for help.
>
>  I summarized the who-what-when in this blog post :
>
> http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/48
>
> So if anybody wants to contribute, he's more than welcome to answer this
> thread, or show up on IRC.
>
> Regards,
> Tarnyko

I'm interested in being interested. Are you looking to move on entirely, 
or are you just looking for additional team members? Of the questions 
that come to my mind that would be appropriate for the mailing list, the 
first and most high level is existential in nature. I'm unfamiliar with 
the back story on why Tor Lillqvist moved on. I myself switched jobs last 
year, and no longer even have to acknowledge windows even exists. The 
notion of windows development on windows itself has long died in my eyes. 
Still, I have interest in maintaining the ability of a number of small 
projects to cross compile to windows targets. (Either from linux or cygwin 
hosts).

Sincerely I mean not to troll, but I do find myself questioning the 
validity of cross platform development in the current era. With the 
seemingly overwhelming forces of fragmented proprietary platforms with 
lock-in™ based technology winning more and more over to "the dark side", 
people who are actually interested in open/community based/lower level 
technology generally just use a linux or a bsd. Like me, the ones out of 
that group that still have to put up with windows (and even osx), get 
older and either move on to new positions or gain the seniority to phase 
out the silliness. So while the intellectual challenge of getting any 
sort of work done with windows will always be a thrilling pursuit for 
those of us with a certain type of post traumatic stress disorder, are 
there enough end users for this?

[editors note: I just deleted two paragraphs of even-less-constructive 
ranting, that can be summarized as an even further off topic grumbling 
about me not liking OSX and that "other" toolkit.]

The pleasure and professorial paths that desktop computing with open 
source software offer will continue to grow, though as a percentage of 
all things software development, it will continue to decline. Given that 
model, it just seems like an indicator of more consolidation for the core 
user base.

There is of course an even more pessimistic school of thought that comes 
to the conclusion that the self inflicted damage from the last generation 
of desktop environments will revive 90's era 'doz on the desk and 'nix in 
the closet/cloud to a point where things like gtk on windows are more 
important than ever, but I'm not that camp yet. (Too many cool things 
like i3wm, for that.) 

C. Thomas Stover