free software

[5468696A6D656E]

This mail is triggered by a sentence in the readme.win32:
"Don't forget that MS-Windows is just a temporary workaround until
you can switch to a GNU system ;-)"

I noted the smiley, but i think this is generally still a philosofy
behind gnupg.

Don't we all want strong crypto for everyone? The 'Free' in 'Free software'
should mean: available for anyone, anywhere. Which means also for
windows users, macintosh users etc. For this you need developers on
those platform to be able to work with their own tools.
(mingw is usually not a preferred developer user interface for windows)
This is not about OS preferences. It's about freedom of choice for developers.
Why not add project files for all compilers to this project?
What's against it? The work involved? If it had been set up as a
crossplatform project in the first place there wouldn't have been a problem,
but now, yes, it will need work. The biggest goal in making crypto
products should not be "making it in some state available" (allthough
that is quite important), but making it available for everyone,
in particular mister average. For desktop computers it's about 92% windows
users, 5% macintosh, 1% linux and a 2% rest. (according to google:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) (other polls which are 
not based on weblogs show even 96.75% windows usage for home users; 
source red sheriff)

If you really want to spread strong crypto to everyone,
make it truely free. Add more windows and mac support, add project
files for all major compilers on those platforms. I don't care which platform
you use yourself, i myself use many. But personally i like to make
my products available to 100% of the desktop users.
If only an elite group works with this software it has failed.

Th.

-- 
__Thijmen Klok________