[fpc-devel] Excellent work you guys have done

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 7 Oct 2008, Michael Schnell wrote:

> 
> > ... but Microsoft controls the features.
> >   
> Of course you are right that they defined what features are in each upgrade
> version of the CIL framework and libraries provided and the other framework
> constructors are likely to follow them. But for developing software that is to
> run in the framework, you don't need to use the features of any given upgrade.
> Software developed using (a development tool that supports) a given subset of
> the features will run on all framework implementations that (in a decent way)
> offer this subset. The developer is free to decide if the additional features
> of the current version of some CIL framework supplier's offer are interesting
> enough to have his product restricted to a subset of the available frameworks.
> (Similar: if you decently use the numerical key pad or the LPT port in your
> software, your product is limited to run on those PCs that offer these
> features.)

Theoretically this is correct. In practice however, the framework
constructors are under a lot of pressure to provide whatever microsoft
came up with or to start using new features, whether they want it or
not.

In FPC, we have this pressure too, but we are free to ignore it, because
we don't use FPC to make money for ourselves.

Michael.