Lack of prebuilt Windows executables of open source things

[Renate]

<rant>

We can argue about the utility/evilness/whatever of Windows, but the fact is 2/3 of all desktops are Window.
Sometimes we would like to use some standard tools from GNU.
(No, we don't want to use some complete shell replacement or something that needs a dozen DLLs.)
So we download a tarball and get some convoluted hunk of code which seems to be predominately C preprocessor conditonals.
I get it, they have made a universal program that could be compiled for CPM, Cray, VAX, maybe even Windows if you could ever get the configuration right.
In this world of continuous integration (and testing) wouldn't it be a nice nod to have a prebuilt executable for Windows?
I'm sure that the EXE is a lot smaller than the tarball.

[retiredfeline]

What about cygwin or WSL, is the application you want there?

It all boils down to developer effort. Somebody has to put in the time to maintain the port.

[AntiProtonBoy]

What about cygwin or WSL, is the application you want there?

It all boils down to developer effort. Somebody has to put in the time to maintain the port.

I think what Op's saying is that some open source projects that actually support Windows don't make binaries available to download. The user is left to his or her own devices to build the thing.

[PKTKS]

I am not sure how long you have actually been dealing w/MS..
But your rant tells me that some facts need more 2 cents... 

<rant>
We can argue about the utility/evilness/whatever of Windows, but the fact is 2/3 of all desktops are Window.

Not true - this is mostly a FALLACY  made to give a boost on a real crappy "OS"
which actually is a bunch of things they bought along time to have as product..

Their real buzz model was to implode each and every better competitor..
piece of cake as they were in full charge of the "OS"

Sometimes we would like to use some standard tools from GNU.
(No, we don't want to use some complete shell replacement or something that needs a dozen DLLs.)

As a matter of fact the whole thing was actual made in the CYGWIN  environment..

Take that as a very hard target... MS never ever will and did support that.
It was and still is a nightmare to put the real thing (CYGWIN) running..

They made everything possible to implode that..  WSL is the last resource..

So we download a tarball and get some convoluted hunk of code which seems to be predominately C preprocessor conditonals.
I get it, they have made a universal program that could be compiled for CPM, Cray, VAX, maybe even Windows if you could ever get the configuration right.
In this world of continuous integration (and testing) wouldn't it be a nice nod to have a prebuilt executable for Windows?

NEVER.  And it will never be.

MS subverted every single piece and bit of standard out there..

For each and every standard exists a MS version property of it
Even HTML has the own MS proprietary "extensions" and compressed "format"

They did that because they are the digital landlords of the realm

nothing exists besides their property - or more modern
INSIDE THEIR PROPERTY  aka  absorbed.

I'm sure that the EXE is a lot smaller than the tarball.

NEVER.   GLIBC is the bottom line of every toolkit out there.

If you are new to *NIX you will soon clash to glibc hard bottom line.

Second thing is actually the "GUI"  toolkit.

In which a war against GTK Qt WxWidgets and the native Xlib and OpenGL is taken place

Not by chance modern GPUs are using proprietary languages.

Bottom line is there is "NO" common format
Best hope is some "interpreter" or compatible layer to run alien programs..

But that is and will be a last resource.

Bottom line is OpenSource x Digital Landlords property.

Paul 

[Jeroen3]

GNU not offering Windows Build is like Americans not using metric.
Sure they could, some do, but most never will.

[PKTKS]

GNU not offering Windows Build is like Americans not using metric.
Sure they could, some do, but most never will.

Hardly someone will take the risk..

Reason being is similar to anyone willing to sue GNU GPL or LGPL..

One is bounded to the license terms as soon as linking the executable.

So is MS by using and linking and "embracing" linux.

Whoever will be crazy enough to pay MS extortive license to link OpenSource code with MS property bounded by MS terms?

IMHO not even MS will do that .. as  they will be crossing the GNU GPL terms as well.

Make no sense anymore mixing the MS realm - just a bad option

Paul

[Renate]

I do Windows, I do Android, I do Linux.
I don't understand all this hostility.
Maybe MS has operated illegally/immorally/unethically/not nice/whatever.
As I said in the OP, that was not what I wanted to discuss.
I still think that some in the *nix community demonstrate obtuseness which doesn't hurt MS but alienates possible *nix convertees.

I never said anything about GUI applications, but I expect that modern, command line programs written in C could be made reasonably portable.

[PKTKS]

MS was never "friendly" and never should be taken light.

Bottom line is GLIBC in which the MS glibc version is their property.

Linking any program with their property is a liability.

Nothing do discuss. It just do not worth the risk.

Dumping MS has been the best possible choice.

Paul

[Nominal Animal]

We can argue about the utility/evilness/whatever of Windows, but the fact is 2/3 of all desktops are Window.

Popularity is irrelevant.

There are some very popular projects with Windows etc. binaries like Inkscape, Gimp, LibreOffice, and so on, but for the vast majority of open source projects, most if not all their users run some variant of Linux (or *BSD).

What you are demanding, is like me demanding Adobe to release Photoshop for free on Linux, because running it on Wine is too much work for me.

The 'free' in Free/Open Source Software is not 'no cost'.

In this world of continuous integration (and testing) wouldn't it be a nice nod to have a prebuilt executable for Windows?

Fuck that; pay me.

Seriously speaking, the way free/open source software ecosystem works is not based on charity; it is based on equitable exchange of time, effort, and competence, observing that those who do not contribute do not usually cost anything either.  It does mean that demands from those who do not contribute are utterly silly.  Offensive, really.

If you wanted projects to have Windows binaries, you'd need to contribute such binaries, or contribute to projects producing such binaries, or pay someone to do such work for you.  This is how the FOSS ecosystem works, like it or not.

[PKTKS]

(..)
If you wanted projects to have Windows binaries, you'd need to contribute such binaries, or contribute to projects producing such binaries, or pay someone to do such work for you.  This is how the FOSS ecosystem works, like it or not.

The linking of these binaries require the MS property with it.

Who will risk to pay the term of MS to distribute "free" as in beer.. things of MS?
Some time ago even a folk which provided bug fix (free!!) CDs was sued by MS.

Take no chance at all - want OSS? go all OSS.  forget the MS deep shit

Paul

[Renate]

What you are demanding...

I was not demanding. I was asking why this state of affairs exist.
All the hostility in this thread pretty much answers my question.

Clearly all *nix websites should just check User-Agent on the browser and redirect Windows users to a Rick Astley video.

[Nominal Animal]

We can trust Microsoft to not try any shenanigans with their C++ runtime licensing (they don't really have a C one), because if they did, they'd run afoul of a large number of very well lawyered software companies that could gang up and stomp MS into pieces.

The core of my own point is that popularity is irrelevant.  No matter how popular or unpopular a FOSS project is, it only remains alive from useful contributions.  (Those are not necessarily code; documentation is often at least as important, and reliable good translations for user-facing projects are not easy to come by, so there is lots of technical time and effort that non-programmers can contribute.)

Companies like Canonical and Red Hat (now IBM) sell services or support, and being popular makes that easier.  So, there are some projects where popularity helps gain financial support.  But in direct terms, popularity really is completely irrelevant to the vast majority of projects; this is important to understand and accept.

What you are demanding...

I was not demanding. I was asking why this state of affairs exist.
All the hostility in this thread pretty much answers my question.

Clearly all *nix websites should just check User-Agent on the browser and redirect Windows users to a Rick Astley video.

Why can't you see that it is not about Windows, but about contributing?

You probably think your corner coffee shop is hostile too, for charging you for the coffee, instead of fawning over you and giving you lifelong free coffee because you are such a valued person, eh?

No.  The reason is that relatively few Windows users contribute.  When a project acquires Windows-based contributors, it eventually acquires those easy-to-install Windows binaries as well, because that's the easiest way to maintain and develop multiple versions of the same binaries on a single workstation.

You should be angry at non-contributing Windows users, and not at the developers.  The former choose not to contribute; the latter –– like myself –– don't even have a Windows installation to verify the installation binaries work!

[PKTKS]

We can trust Microsoft to not try any shenanigans with their C++ runtime licensing (they don't really have a C one), because if they did, they'd run afoul of a large number of very well lawyered software companies that could gang up and stomp MS into pieces.

It looks like this folk have not enough prejudice made by MS buz methods...

I think they never could craft some sort of C license..
A compiler license was always enough as long as they have native LIBC on top of that

Apart from that the whole toolkit is total property..
being that MONO C# crappy interpreters or whatever basic they fit.

There is no way to actually link a binary without a license and relicense.. and new license....

Paul

[Cerebus]

<rant>

We can argue about the utility/evilness/whatever of Windows, but the fact is 2/3 of all desktops are Window.
Sometimes we would like to use some standard tools from GNU.
(No, we don't want to use some complete shell replacement or something that needs a dozen DLLs.)
So we download a tarball and get some convoluted hunk of code which seems to be predominately C preprocessor conditonals.
I get it, they have made a universal program that could be compiled for CPM, Cray, VAX, maybe even Windows if you could ever get the configuration right.
In this world of continuous integration (and testing) wouldn't it be a nice nod to have a prebuilt executable for Windows?
I'm sure that the EXE is a lot smaller than the tarball.

Well you hit the nail on the head with your initial "Lack of prebuilt Windows executables of open source things".  That's it, it's open source, not open binary. As it is, if you look hard enough, which is usually not very hard, you will find someone who maintains a repository of binary builds for <insert name of platform here> of an open source package if the  originator/maintainer of the source package does not themselves already provide one.

Most open source packages are written by *nix people for *nix people, they are so not interested in Windows. If they have provided for a Windows build in the source count yourself lucky. If you don't like the customer service they are providing you can always demand your money back and take your business else where.

[Nominal Animal]

It looks like this folk have not enough prejudice made by MS buz methods...

No, they (or their lawyers) have just read the license very carefully.

Let's assume most FOSS projects would use Visual Studio Community Edition to build the binaries.  Its license terms are here with the redistribution of runtime libraries licensed here.

These are rather bulletproof in that if you create a dynamically linked executable using Visual Studio Community Edition from non-Microsoft owned sources, the only Microsoft Intellectual Property contained in the output files is explicitly licensed under the above licenses.  Static linking is iffy wrt. C++ runtime, but I'm not even sure if Visual Studio supports that for Windows targets; but for dynamically linked executables, the situation is clear: safe to do, as long as you comply with the project license itself.

[PKTKS]

It looks like this folk have not enough prejudice made by MS buz methods...

No, they (or their lawyers) have just read the license very carefully.
..

hmm i have been "reading" these opaque terms over and over and over.
dozens versions of that (even before cloud and internet..) ...

And each time I still fallback fuzzy confused and not willing to do anything MS.

The whole thing just not looks right neither sounds right..

And risking to bear MS was never a good outcome..
seen that dozen times as well.

Still too much fuzzed and unreliable "stuff"  crafted by a bunch of... 

Paul

[SiliconWizard]

In this world of continuous integration (and testing) wouldn't it be a nice nod to have a prebuilt executable for Windows?

Quite a few open-source projects distribute binaries for Windows. But many do not.

It all boils down to the maintainer's goals, capabilities and resources. Not everyone wants to bother setting up Windows machines and dev environments just for doing this, especially when they use mainly use Linux. And Windows doesn't have package managers like Linux distributions do, so when a particular project requires specific tools for building, it can be extremely time-consuming to set up and maintain. I mainly use MSYS2 on Windows for this, it does have a package manager, but there are far fewer packages available than on any even crappy Linux distro, so chances are high that a given tool won't be available in MSYS2 and you'll have to build it yourself, pluck some hair with dependencies, run into compile errors, and so on.

Since you seem to be interested in this, just do it. You'll see.

I don't quite get the frustration; it looks like a child's tantrum. Open-source is frigging free, in every sense of the word. People writing and maintaining open-source software are free to do whatever they want and don't owe you anything. Just take whatever is made available and be glad. And if this isn't enough, just go look elsewhere.

I'm sure that the EXE is a lot smaller than the tarball.

That would completely depend on the project and the programming language(s) used. Sometimes it's the case. Many times it's not.
Besides, these days, many open source projects are available through VCS (mainly GIT these days), and you don't necessarily have to download a complete archive every time you want to update sources. Just pulling the differences usually take a lot less bandwidth overall and is more efficient.

All in all, distributiing binaries has a cost, and the more platforms you target, the higher the cost. Cost again in terms of dev environments required, in terms of testing, in terms of storage, in terms of network bandwidth, in terms of support... (yes the more binaries you make available and the more support questions you'll get whether you make it clear they are unsupported or not.) This is why most of the large open-source projects that do distribute binaries for all major platforms (when the project is itself cross-platform enough for this) are projects that get a lot of funding.

[Nominal Animal]

hmm i have been "reading" these opaque terms over and over and over.
dozens versions of that (even before cloud and internet..) ...

And each time I still fallback fuzzy confused and not willing to do anything MS.

A bit over a couple of decades ago I paid a lawyer (specialized in the area and teaching it to other lawyers) to teach me what I needed to know to understand licenses.
Money well spent.

Quite a few of the current greybeard/wizard-level Linux developers have been burned by past Microsoft behaviour, usually before they switched to Linux.
So, the hostility is understandable, and often based on actual personal experiences, not "prejudice".
(Regardless of whether one thinks the hostility is acceptable or not.)

I have encountered the frustration and anger Renate is feeling right now in real life, too, and the only thing that seems to work (as in dispelling that anger and frustration), is to shock them enough so they see the true underlying reason: even FOSS works under marketplace rules; it is not "no-cost charity".  The exchange medium is just usually not money, but time, effort, and expertise.

Gentle speech does not seem to work.  In my experience, they always soon lapsed back to believing they were being ostracized because of the OS they were using (or rather, because they weren't using Linux).  But that's absolutely not it.  They just did not understand –– and I believe Renate does not understand either, but might, after they calm down and re-read this thread to see it with a clearer mind –– that the hostility is not towards Windows users, but towards non-contributing users.

Just like in real life, there has to be give-and-take for interaction to be useful.  Take-and-take –– being a non-contributing user –– is unfair; and unfair operates at the biological level in most humans.  (Just look at Youtube at the "fairness experiments" on monkeys; that's how deep it goes.)

How to contribute, or how to be useful for a project so they'll be useful to you, is a somewhat "pure" type of social interaction: nobody sees you, only how you interact with others, so biological details etc. do not matter at all, unless you yourself bring them up.  (Certain people who have learned their physical appearance gives them real world privileges have a hard time adjusting to that; one person once spent considerable effort in explaining to me how much modeling work they had already done, and therefore deserved extra credit from an online course I was teaching.)

One of the most useful and appreciated form of contributions is good bug reports: these require very little technical skills, but is something everyone can learn to do.  I already mentioned some others (translations, testing).  So "contribution" is not about "coding" or "programming"; it is about making the project itself more useful to its current developers.  Again, popularity –– how many users the project has –– is usually completely irrelevant, because only the contributions matter; only the contributions keep the project alive.