I have Cygwin for Win32 and GCC 3.3 the best compiler and is opensource.
Why I should use the proprietary VisualC ???

First, why do you need to compile BOINC for win32 at all? There is a perfectly good download for win32.

Unfortunately, programming for windows tends to be different with SDKs for the different compilers, and you are basically stuck with the decision that was made by the original developers.

> First, why do you need to compile BOINC for win32 at all? There is a
> perfectly good download for win32.
Because I prefer to compile my applications if I can.
To understand something more than a musical instrument player or worst than a user that put a CD in the player...

> Unfortunately, programming for windows tends to be different with SDKs for the
> different compilers,

> and you are basically stuck with the decision that was
> made by the original developers.
Yes because the project s@hclassic becomed opensource switching to BOINC, so I expected that I can use all GPL software.
For me is a nonsense have a opensource appl that require a closedsource compiler.
How much cost MSVisualC ?
I think that very few people have this, only professional developer.
GCC is free, anyone can use it (on every CPU and OS)

> Unfortunately, programming for windows tends to be different with SDKs for the
> different compilers
I forgot to write that if you prefer SDK to develop your application, you can use surely opensource SDK that run the same look also for other CPU and OS than Windows.
An example is Kdevelop, or the last Eclipse http://www.eclipse.org
Or if you need to devolop only for Win32 you can use Dev-C++
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp/
and are free ...

Developers tend to stick with the language that they know. This is especially true for systems that are developed within short timeframes, because they wouldn't have a lot of time to go off and first learn a new development language.

BOINC has evolved into a client(GUI)/server(Service) type application and pretty soon there will be different GUI's available. The GUI's will very likely be developed with open-source SDK's. This leaves only the "Service" side reliant on VC++.

I would expect that there is (will be?) a plan to port the Service to an open-source SDK, provided that there is one capable of producing a result that is as reliable as one produced by VC++.

When will this be?
I wouldn't expect it to be in the short-term, since there are still many features pending on the current source tree.

> BOINC has evolved into a client(GUI)/server(Service) type application and
> pretty soon there will be different GUI's available. The GUI's will very
> likely be developed with open-source SDK's. This leaves only the "Service"
> side reliant on VC++.
> I would expect that there is (will be?) a plan to port the Service to an
> open-source SDK, provided that there is one capable of producing a result that
> is as reliable as one produced by VC++.
Having a unique opensource SDK and graphics library (like GTK) permit also to have the same look&feel of the GUI on all platform.
This is a very cheap and friendly solution.