Dan Collins wrote:
I personally would not. Implementation of Perl on Windows leaves much to be desired, and I'm too lazy to learn a 'real' programming language.
You wouldn't use a port :P Which APIs (useful for toolserver projects) does Windows provide that UNIX doesn't?
That aside, I don't know how useful a Windows server would be since users wouldn't be able to use any sort of GUI - am I right? For example, this rules AWB out. Is there enough support in Windows to actually work on bots on it, or would the lack of GUI (which is probably the reason windows users don't like the toolserver as it is, its arcane command line) be debilitating?
I think this is the main point. Unix systems have a clear shell, and can easily be forwarded via Internet. OTOH Windows relies too much on graphical interfaces, there're would need to be a graphical login (Remote Desktop, VNC..). Providing a command line shell would be useless to most prospective users, and also for admins as not everything can be configured from command line (although this is slowly changing with new versions).
Also, don't we have something against running closed source software for this sort of thing? That was always the reason we use MySQL rather than oracle or something else (not that I know enough to say that it was a bad decision) so is a Windows server fitting with that?
Not really. Most servers are running Solaris, which is not fully free. The issue of the licenses is also interesting. It would be interesting to run the Win toolserver in ReactOS but alas it's not mature enough.