Some of you are missing what I'm getting at. I'm not asking FIRST to port all of their software to UNIX, or to get Microchip to port the C18 to UNIX. I want them to recognize community efforts to bring the "standard" FIRST software (and new, innovative tools) to other platforms, and improve upon them. What I'm looking for are developers who are willing to work together on this.
I don't want first to stop using MCC18; I want US to write a free-software C compiler for the PIC18F. I want US to consolidate efforts on creating useful tools for FIRST competitors, preferably as free software. We don't need FIRST to do it for us, they have enough on their hands. Chief Delphi has a number of outstanding programmers, and what I hope is that they would be willing to collaborate on a number of projects instead of creating a handful of fragmented projects, that, although useful, aren't well-known or are undermaintained.
All I'm asking of FIRST is official support for community projects, and if they end up being good enough, considering adding them to the official collection of tools. At this moment I'm looking for people who are willing to contribute actively to this.
EDIT: shawger beat me to it
That's exactly what I'm talking about.