Re: Windows emacs-25.1 i686 vs x86_64?

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > In GNU projects, we typically stop worrying about an underlying
  > platform when its original supplier stops supporting it. For
  > example, Emacs no longer worries about IRIX because SGI stopped
  > supporting IRIX in 2013.

In the GNU Project, the question that matters, for a system version of
no particular importance to us (such as any version of Windows), is
whether users care about that version enough to maintain support for
it.  If they do that, we may as well not delete their code
unless it is getting in the way rather badly.

If we have no direct evidence about whether users care about a certain
version, by default we can suppose that they won't care about a
version that is no longer being maintained.  But that's not the
criterion, just a default way to guess.

Given that Windows is so widely used, and that so many users stick to
old versions of it, it is plausible to me that millions of people
still use Windows 98.  Maybe tens or hundreds of millions.

That number may still be growing.  ISTR that even a few years ago
people were still installing unauthorized copies of Windows 98 on PCs,
because Microsoft made it harder to install subsequent Windows
versions.  It would not surprise me if Windows 98 was installed on
millions of new PCs this year.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.