The VII PPPR (Pending Peeves Progress Review)

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In article <dvs9eh$1hue$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Stewart Gordon says...
>

>I still don't get the whole M$ copyright issue.  It's as if M$ was 
>trying to stop anybody from programming in anything but C(++).
>

Whether it was deliberate or a side-effect of sloppy licensing, the end result
is that Microsoft has made it very hard to code against the Win32 runtime
without using their compiler/IDE.  Its not so much that MS doesn't want you to
use C++, they just don't care how hard life is for you if you don't back their
compiler.

The "coup de gras" of such offensive behavior from MS would have to be with the
availability of the ATL.  In order to work with certain components (say,
anything WTL based), or code with certain libraries, one needs a copy of the ATL
libraries.  Unfortunately, the only way to get a hold of these is to purchase a
copy of Visual C++(6 or better).  The ATL libs are not listed as redistributable
components, so this is the only option for legitimate development.

- EricAnderton at yahoo