A number of commenters on my previous entry thought I was basically saying "Screw Windows". Lukas Smith and Bill Karwin, both of whom I respect enormously, noted that Windows is a dominant development platform for MySQL users, and that one of the reasons for MySQL's popularity was that it runs smoothly (for a while now) on Windows.
Bill and Lukas: You are 100% correct.
That said, what I wrote was this:
Forget Windows for now: Use open source, community-maintained, and standardized libraries within the kernel. Don't rewrite libc and various other quality open source libraries because of Not Invented Here syndrome or because Windows lacks these things. Focus on the standards and don't bother with platforms that don't conform to POSIX. If Microsoft wants future MySQL versions to run on its platforms, partner with Microsoft and have them do the port. While you're at it, drop support for old platforms like Netware and other crap that is obselete.
The above is advice to the team in charge of re-architecting the database server. What it boils down to is this: focus first and forement on using standard, community-maintained open source libraries and on creating a neatly-architected, clean and lean kernel. After that, worry about Windows ports.
So, it's not about kicking Windows to the curb. It's about priorities. The priority should be clean code. Because having clean, easy-to-understand code leads to:
- A more modular architecture
- Exponential increase in community contributors (because many more people can actually understand the code)
- A more stable product (because fixing one thing has much less chance of breaking another)
I posit that the above three things would make a Windows port much easier, and cleaner. More developers able to contribute, less time trying to figure out the spaghetti, and less chance the port would break tangential pieces of code.
And thus, I believe a solid Windows port of a core kernel would be easier and faster to complete once a POSIX-compliant and clean kernel is completed.
