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Comment by jaxr | Hacker News Reader

As a long time Linux user, it's always felt kind of unjust that all good Linux software is ported to other os, but there is no reciprocity. I do understand all the nuances, but Apple and especially MS seem to get a lot out of the GNU/Linux ecosystem and give very little in return.I would appreciate using some open source software released for Mac in my Linux desktop. Thanks to the developers of this project! Will give it a spin...

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> Apple and especially MS seem to get a lot out of the GNU/Linux ecosystem and give very little in return

LLVM/Clang has been a huge boon to the GNU/Linux ecosystem, and dragged gcc into the modern era, and was largely funded Apple for many years.

How has it been a huge boon to the GNU ecosystem? Clang is slow, the code generated is not consistently better than GCC for most of the software I personally run benchmarks for, and it's not like GCC has ever been worse for feature support than a Microsoft compiler.

It's better to point out WebKit.

> How has it been a huge boon to the GNU ecosystem?

It would seem that you never used GCC in the pre-llvm era. The GCC project has had a couple of notable periods of stagnation, in each case being "rescued" by the emergence of meaningful competition. First EGCS, and then later llvm.

Clang brought new developers to the space, it disproved the assertion that error messages had to be cryptic and unhelpful, and it has been a peer competitor for an extended period of time now. The two projects compete and cross-pollinate to their mutual benefit.

People seem to forget that GCC was flopping around on C++11 for a long while until clang started pushing things along.

Not to say they've fallen behind, just that a competitor clearly kicked things back into gear. Same as Firefox and Webkit-based browsers did for the many years of IE6's monopoly.

Not really now.

If you use Windows or macOS then you can open all your time using the OS suppliers tools or tools bought from third parties.

In macOS you can use UNIX but it is the FreeBSD world so no GNU or Linux there.

In windows if you want Unix then WSL which is GNU/Linux but you can easily work in plain Windows.

I think this has less to do with "justness" and more to do with cost effectiveness. A majority of people use Windows. That's followed by macOS (or ChromeOS but you can't easily directly port software over there). Then you have GNU/Linux desktop users.

If you're building software you're often going to target your audiences where they are.

In the developer world, there are many desktop Linux users. So, we have more tools available to us related to our jobs. I use desktop Linux and appreciate that.

But, most people across industries and in their personal lives are not in the same situation.

It’s too bad that community interest/investment in efforts like GNUStep, Étoilé, and Cocotron have been low, because a major yet consistently underestimated component of why macOS has long had a thriving quality indieware scene is the depth, breadth, and quality of its frameworks. Cocoa/AppKit enables solo devs and small teams to punch well beyond their weight and I’m sure those devs would be happy to sell their programs to Linux users too if they could cross-compile.

As another long time Linux user, I've just started to worry how Microssoft is invading my work life:

GitHub, TypeScript, Vscode (when I have to interact with people who cannot think outside an IDE), and I've just started to use Playwright.

Same. I exported all my GitHub repos to GitLab, and I'm thinking about using Neovim (not because it's better, but because I hate Microsoft).

Sadly there isn't much I can do about TypeScript and NPM.

Microsoft wants to control everything in our lives.

Typescript and vscode are both good tools so can’t really hate on them, there is codium which removes the MS telemetry from vs code.

The goal of any corporation, some are more successful than others.

> I do understand all the nuances

The reasons, in decreasing significance: (1) demand and (2) OS interfaces.

1. Linux desktop has a small user base; there's simply less interest and value in porting to Linux.

2. The POSIX interface is basic (well, more basic than Windows); it's easier to emulate/replace/shim Linux interfaces than Windows ones.

Well, for Mac OS X there is GnuStep which has made Cenon possible.

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