BL> Yair... you're right that good PD has to be portable.

PE> No, a properly written C program should be portable,
PE> regardless of it's copyright status.

Well, its highly desirable would be a better way of saying it.
Not always feasible tho. If you decide to support say the Win
api coz thats where your market is, you may decide that portable
isnt as important for commercial prospects.

BL> The only important thing about a commercial program
BL> is its ability to make money. Nothing else matters.

Yes, but thats not necessarily saying that its not a good idea
to be portable AS WELL if thats possible. For example making it
portable may allow you to gracefully change compiler if thats
necessary or support another OS conveniently. Thats been part
of the problem with those who chose to use Pascal for commercial
software, that has been a major impediment to say offering an OS2
native version as well for some. Just the lack of a decent Pascal
compiler producing decent OS2 native code.

BL> On the other hand, the only valid reason to release something
BL> to the PD, is to enable others to build on that program without
BL> having to reinvent the wheel, in which case portability is crucial.

There are other reasons, like just wanting to allow others to benefit
from your effort, even if they wont be building on it, say you just
think that the software world works better with freely available PD
code instead of commercial code.

--- PQWK202