Wholly unnecessary flame. (was Re: pyXML!)

[Tim Peters]

[Tim]
> We Windows weenies are *all* major leeches off Mark Hammond's tireless
> multi-year Python Windows work, and he had no luck *begging* for help
> much of that time.

[and among some similar replies, we have ...]

[Max Møller Rasmussen]
> VC does not come installed on every windows machine you know.

[[Monty Taylor]
> Which is a fairly appropriate summary as to why Open Source
> projects do tend to wither a bit on Windows.  It's not quite so much
> fun to contribute if you have to pay for the priviledge.

It's uncanny that, among tens of thousands of Windows Python users, a
handful just *knew* I was complaining about them specifically <wink>.

It's a percentage game, Windows or not:  the majority of users of any
project, regardless of platform, won't contribute anything tangible back.
That's fine; the game works that way for good & obvious reasons.  But I
maintain that the percentage among Windows users is *remarkably* small,
after allowing for that relatively (compared to, say, Linux) few Windows
weenies have a usable compiler.  It *appears* to be even worse on the Mac
(Classic OS), where Jack Jansen has been making Python fly seemingly all by
himself for years.

Curious, isn't it?  The availability of development tools isn't enough to
account for it; neither sheer number of users nor their platform expertise.
So don't think of it as an attack -- it's an invitation to ponder the
mysteries of human nature and how they manifest in choice of primary OS <0.9
wink>.

e.g.-wondering-how-many-people-in-college-have-msvc-ly y'rs  - tim