GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 329833
Windows port
Last modified: 2018-07-12 00:07:39 UTC
It would be great if F-Spot ran on Windows, as it would yet another program (like Firefix) that people transitioning to Linux could still enjoy (and that might encourage them to in the first place). There's always the flip-side of the argument, that it encourages people to stay on Windows, but I think the liklihood of that happening is outweighed by the advantages a port would have. Sqlite and littleCMS have windows installers, but I couldn't find any information about libjpeg for windows (it seems not likely). Libexif runs on Win32 also. From the little searching I did, it doesn't seem like dbus is supported on Windows yet, but if that's the case it shouldn't be hard to #ifdef the dbus parts out. Are there any other dependencies that don't run easily/at all on Windows?
How many people do you know that have switched to a Free operating system after using Firefox? I don't know ANY. If you want to port it to Windows, no one can stop you, but I hope it won't happen. It will create a support nightmare for the developers and waste their time. Look at what happened to the Gaim project when all the stupid Windows users started trying to use it and couldn't figure out even the most simple problems. Windows users have plenty of non-free alternatives they can use so let them!
Then again, there is a much bigger user base on Windows, and although it is true that we might get a lot of windows specific trouble reports (which a windows port responsible(s) will have to deal with), we will also * get better feedback on F-Spot usage * "lure" more C# developers to work on F-Spot (from Windows .Net environment) I agree with Gabriel here, pending of course we get someone who is willing to take care of the windows specific problems....
"Look at what happened to the Gaim project when all the stupid Windows users started trying to use it and couldn't figure out even the most simple problems." I think it's arrogant to write people off as stupid. If those users couldn't figure out how to use Gaim, then the problem is probably with Gaim, it's documentation, or how accessible they make that documentation. My contributions to F-Spot and free software are certainly not aimed at or catering to some elite group of free-OS using smartypants. Cross-platform, open-source software benefits the world by exposing users to the idea of open source and encouraging open standards.
I'm all for f-spot being available on both platforms. It's the whole joy of mono/.Net framework right?
If someone wants to send me a windows machine that would probably help ;)
*** Bug 526108 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
F-Spot has moved to https://github.com/f-spot/f-spot/issues If this Bugzilla ticket is still valid in a recent version of F-Spot, please feel free to post this topic as a ticket in the F-Spot project on GitHub. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping as we are planning to shut down GNOME Bugzilla in favor of GNOME Gitlab.