64-bit windows version?

[Simon Marlow]

skaller wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 08:49 +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
> 
>> I don't think we'll be able to drop the mingw route either, mainly because while 
>> the MS tools are free to download, they're not properly "free", and we want to 
>> retain the ability to have a completely free distribution with no dependencies.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand this. MS tools are free to download
> by anyone, but not redistributable. The binaries needed by
> programs *built* by those tools are not only free to download,
> they're free to redistribute, and they're less encumbered than
> almost all so-called 'free software' products.

"The binaries needed by programs built by these tools...", you're referring to 
the C runtime DLLs?  Why does that matter?

Note I said "with no dependencies" above.  A Windows native port of GHC would 
require you to go to MS and download the assembler and linker separately - we 
couldn't automate that, there are click-through licenses and stuff.

> Hmm .. can't MS be coaxed into supplying some support to the
> developers? After all, Haskell IS a major lazily evaluated
> statically typed functional programming language. Why wouldn't
> MS be interested  in bringing GHC on board? They have an
> Ocaml (called F#) now..

MS pays for Ian Lynagh, who works full time on GHC as a contractor.  MS puts 
roughly as much money into GHC as it does into F#, FWIW.

Cheers,
	Simon