John A. De Goes:
I think the (valid) concern is that too many people are choosing platform-specific packages when there are alternatives available (albeit not as convenient in some cases), and this really hurts the Windows community because Windows is so radically different from all the other operating systems.
Its apparent that Neil has the legitimate concern of general purpose libraries becoming or being built on platform specific pieces - a situation I also want to avoid seeing as I work on three different platforms. The point I'm trying to make is that some programs and libraries perform platform specific taskes and that's ok - there is no loss of portability because it wouldn't make sense to port them anyway. Examples include Debian/Arch packaging, X.org bindings / Window Managers, Xen system call bindings, etc. Tom