To tell you the truth, I'd be more than happy if you continued in your efforts going forward with Perl 6 and bootstrapping Perl 5. As I said I applaud your work. Did you miss that part in your response? To me it is just a matter of craftsmanship. Why in the world would you want anyone(Windows user or not) to have problems with your software? Not you chromatic--- this is the 'you' of my original rant. What all of the posts I've seen today admit to is that they don't even bother to test their code on the hated platform. I find that amazing.

I'm not happy to receive lectures on what I should or shouldn't be doing for my free time. If you want to tell me what to do, either hire me or find some other mutually beneficial way to compel me, because I'm very happy to tell ungrateful jerks to fix it themselves.

What all of the posts I've seen today admit to is that they don't even bother to test their code on the hated platform. I find that amazing.

Why is that amazing? I don't test my code on platforms I don't have access to. It's remarkably difficult. I rely on people who have problems to report bugs. I don't know how much easier to make it for them to do so.

I make a simple observation and what I get in response is not discourse, but anger. I have never in the years that I've been part of PM ever, EVER, told you or any other monk what to do. Certainly not about your work for the Perl community. Are you suggesting that I have?

I'm suggesting that you, me, Larry, no one has the right to tell other volunteers what to do with their spare time or to berate them for caring about different things than you, I, Larry, anyone else cares about. It doesn't matter if the person is reasonably famous within the Perl world and wrote a book or two on the subject or is someone who's just appeared with his or her first module.

You're right that I'm completely frustrated with the lack of support from many Windows users. Where my software doesn't work on their platform, it's not that I don't want it to work on that platform. It's that I don't use that platform and have no desire to use that platform. My experience is that no one cares enough about my software on Windows to put forth any effort even to report bugs from Windows, but plenty of them put forth the effort to complain that I don't run Windows.

This does not endear me to test my software on Windows. I suspect I'm not alone in this feeling.

My work is no where near as important(hell it's not even important) as yours....

Now you're not being fair to yourself. If people were ragging on you for not doing things their way, I'd stick up for you too. If you don't run a particular platform or it's not enjoyable for you to spend your precious volunteer time porting to a particular platform, that's exactly your right, and no one should criticize that choice of yours.

We are posting at very nearly the same time so if what I say seems out of synch that would be why.

I guess I'm as guilty of projection as anyone else--- I just assumed(bad word I know) that folks kept machines for testing based on what the code in question would run on. It just never occurred to me that this wouldn't be the case. Having said that, your reply forces me to examine that assumption; and frankly I find it pretty faulty. Why would you want to cripple a spare machine(if you have one) with something like Windows? First of all as was pointed out by runrig

some people prefer not to pay for something they don't want?

Which same actually makes two points. It is unwanted, and it costs money. In self-defense, it is not that I want it, it is rather that my customers use it. Second I tend to forget it's cost since upgrades are reasonable; worse I forget from the other side that Linux is free. In addition, I am guilty of thinking that everyone else thinks the same way as I do. Which in retrospect is damn silly, but it has been a lifelong failing. Face it, I don't understand why you haven't gotten the feedback from the windows side of things. I don't mean the criticism, I mean the bug reports, the suggestions and all the rest that makes the sacrifice of free time worth while. While I make no claim to being typical, I've never hesitated to email with either problems or suggestions. They have invariably lead to interesting connections and incremental changes for the better along the way.
I think what this comes down to is that good programmers deselect themselves from the group I was ranting about.

--hsm

"Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."