[vlc] Re: Why not OS 9?

[Samuel Hocevar]

On Sat, Nov 23, 2002, David Hogg wrote:
> Why aren't you making a version of VLC for OS 9? Couldn't you at least make 
> it carbonised (ie. for both 9 and OSX)? I mean come on - you've made 
> version of vlc for practically every other operating system on this planet, 
> except OS 9 - which itself is the most widely used operating system on the 
> mac.

   It's true that portability is one of VLC's important goals, but OS 9
lacks basic features that would allow to port VLC easily. No offense, but
honestly, OS 9 sucks. It has deplorable memory protection, which makes it
difficult to debug. It lacks decent multithreading capabilities, and VLC
makes heavy usage of threads. There are probably other issues I'm not
aware of. It may sound challenging to some (I personally love to port VLC
to various retarded systems) but more important, I know of no VideoLAN
developer who still uses OS 9.

   You know, what's cool with systems like Unix is that you can have the
computer run during the night, and have people log on it, compile code,
test it. You can have several people doing it at the same time. OS 9 is
completely unable of this, and I think it's why developers don't use
Classic (note that Windows sucks also a lot in that area, but there are
tools for Unix to compile and even run Windows code).

   It's difficult enough to find developers to work on the OS X port so
the chances that someone ports VLC to OS 9 are very little. But note that
we won't prevent anyone from doing it: all the sources are available, and
if anyone volunteers for the task we'll happily provide him with infor-
mation on how to proceed.

Regards,
-- 
Sam.
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