[PLUG] GCC verses Visual Studio...

Michael Robinson plug_1 at robinson-west.com
Thu Feb 18 00:46:39 UTC 2010


Is it true that Mozilla Firefox for Windows is commonly compiled using
Microsoft's Visual Studio?  If that is the case, I suspect a legal
problem.  The ReactOS project insists on supporting Microsoft Visual C
compilation over mingw(GCC) compilation!  Two things get thrown in 
your face if you linger in the ReactOS forums for any length of time.
First thing is that GCC is supposedly crap and that MSVC is supposedly
awesome.  One reason this kind of rhetoric is stupid is that GCC is open
source and it can be fixed if it has a problem.  I think legally that
trying to compile a Windows clone and give it away for free using MSVC
to compile it is asking for litigation.

What is structured exception handling and what is the philosophy
pertaining to it as far as GCC is concerned?

Is it true that many of the "open source" projects on Sourceforge are
designed to be compiled via Microsoft Visual Studio?

What is the truth about Visual Studio being "free?"  I don't buy the
free bit and I think there is a danger in trusting Microsoft, but many
in the ReactOS community think I'm nuts for saying so.

Why is it so hard to find the Microsoft EULA for Visual Studio Express
2010?  The best I can seem to do is grab bits and pieces of old EULA's.




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