Re: PSPP for Windows

[Nigel Brown]

> On 15 Nov 2015, at 5:09 pm, John Darrington <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 10:26:20AM +1000, Nigel Brown wrote:
> 
> 
>     I think the exception of reliable behaviour on Windows comes from 
> PSPP???s own webpage when it says ???It is a Free replacement for the 
> proprietary program SPSS???. Many probably wouldn't expect a ???replacement" 
> to require a different operating system to be a reliable replacement. Perhaps 
> it should say ???It is a Free replacement for the proprietary program IBM 
> SPSS Statistics for Linux???.
> 
> 
> There are serveral issues here:
> 
> 1.  Freedom is more important than reliability.  The purpose of PSPP is too 
> allow
> people to escape their proprietary systems.  Before there was PSPP people 
> used to
> say - "I can't run a free OS because I need SPSS"  - now that excuse does not 
> apply.
> 
> 2.  "For Linux" is just wrong.  "Linux" is a kernel and PSPP has nothing to 
> do with
> it except that PSPP can run on operating systems which also happen to use 
> Linux.  We
> don't make any system calls to the kernel except through the standard 
> library. See
> http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html for more information on this issue.
> We could of course have said "for GNU" but I think people will realise it is 
> for GNU
> because the page is hosted on the www.gnu.org
> 
> 3.  I see no reason to advertise IBMs product more than necessary.  So we 
> don't want
> to spell out the name in full.  People who already use SPSS probably know who 
> sells
> it.  If they don't - well we don't want to make it pertinent.
> 
> 4.  We don't make any claims about reliability except that PSPP is more 
> reliable 
> under GNU under other systems.    I don't regularly use Windows these days,
> but I have acquaintances that do and from what I gather no application is 
> reliable
> on that OS.  Crashes, hangs, wierd behaviour are just a fact of life on 
> Windows.
> This is consistent with my experience from many years ago too  that, and the 
> freedom
> issue was why I stopped using it.
> 

Fair comment John

Nigel

> 
> J'
> 
> 
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