[Development] Windows 7 support will be dropped in Qt 6

[Edward Welbourne]

Kevin Kofler (16 June 2020 12:08)
>>> What "shiny new features"? All that a real-world application such as
>>> KWrite really needs from the operating system has been there at
>>> least since the 1990s, possibly since the 1970s.

Edward Welbourne wrote:
>> and I guess it's been in Qt for several releases now, so why would
>> someone with those needs care about upgrading to Qt 6 ?

Kevin Kofler (16 June 2020 19:25)
> Because all KDE applications will have to get ported to Qt 6 soon.

So, just to remind you, we were talking about ancient versions
stretching back to the start of the century, when there was no C++11
compiler available for anyone to use to compile any recent version of
Qt, much less KDE.  So those supporting such antiques need to (either
stick with an old version of Qt or) port the whole GNU tool-chain -
which might be problematic if the GNU tool-chain is exploiting new
features of modern processors in its optimisations; are you telling me
the modern GNU tool-chain (modern enough to support C++11) actually
continues to support the ancient architectures back to start of the
century ?  I'd imagine that would cripple its ability to make the most
of modern processors, but I admit I don't know how the GCC suite is
organised.

I consider it unrealistic to claim that folk using such antiques - that
have no features more recent than the 1990s - would actually care about
updating the version of KDE they're running on their ancient systems;
and I doubt there's been an up-to-date version of KDE that works on such
antiques in the last several years.  So you're complaining about us not
supporting a scenario that isn't even vaguely possible to support.

Or did you just forget context ?
Because I also wonder how many KDE users there are on Win 7.
I'm guessing it's a tiny minority of the Win 7 world.
Of course, those using KDE-derived apps on Win 7 needn't be running KDE,
but then the "security fixes required for inclusion in KDE" constraint
isn't a problem for those versions of the apps.

> You seem to be completely disconnected from how things work in the Free
> Software community, and only seeing the commercial viewpoint.

And you seem to be completely committed to misinterpreting everything in
the lest charitable light.  I just hope that's an illusion, and not your
real intent.

You also seem to be utterly impervious to one of the basic truths of
cross-platform software support: old platforms are not free.
Maintaining the existing code for the old platform comes at a cost; and
adding code to support new things for the old platform comes at a cost,
which is often *significantly* higher than adding the same new feature
to newer platforms (because the feature is designed to make the most of
what those new platforms make easy).  This is just as true for Free
Software projects as it is for commercial.  Any project with a finite
supply of developers is bound to drop support for antiques sooner or
later.

	Eddy.