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The Cygnus Tree and Free Software Maintenance
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Sokolov (a Special Agent of the International Free Computing Task Force - and that's not a joke!) has published an interresting article about how is maintened gcc, gdb and the GNU compilation toolchains on
his ftp site
(also send to several related mailing lists - gcc, gdb, etc..)
It points at some problem and one may think that Cygnus-Redhat is again trying to take over the linux world... but that's not the point." The conspiracy theorists will definitely find room for conspiracy, but really this looks like a major issue for development, and one that warrants discussion.
Michael Sokolov "maintained" the gcc toolchain (for the PalmOS) much in the same way an armed gunman maintains his hostages in a bank holdup. After hijacking the (Palm) gcc project from John Marshall ("official" maintainer who works for Palm, see his earlier comment) he bombarded the palm-dev-forum incessantly, ranting about how his toolchain was better and personally attacking anyone who voiced an opinion otherwise.
Eventually, the list owners (Palm) banished him from the forum, and hopefully that's the last Palm developers have seen or heard of him. I don't doubt that he's a great programmer, but his back-handed ways of going about "maintaining" the gcc toolchain have made him quite a few enemies. Slashdot would be wise to look these things up before proclaiming him some sort of anti-cygwin hero.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Excuse my ignorance, but could anybody fill me in on the "International Free Computing Task Force"?
What kind of an organization is it?
Who are the officers of the organization?
What is their charter?
Where is their headquarters?
Is it a for profit organization or a non-profit organization?
What are some of their past activities?
Are they affiliated with any public or private companies?
Are they affiliated with any governments?
Are they affiliated with any universities?
Can anyone join the task force?
What credentials does one have to poccess to become a member?
How many members do they have?
I'm just curious about this organization because I have never heard of it before.
-- Weiqi Gao weiqigao@speakeasy.net
Well, I guess there's a topic that warrants discussion, but I don't think it's the compilation toolchains.
I took the time to follow the links to Mr. Sokolov's verious postings. He reminds me of me when I was much less mature: carefully argumentative, inflexible, willing to drive others to distraction rather than yield to evidence. You know, an asshole.
I'm recovering. My recovery began when I realized that my technical skills counted for little when compared with my inability to get along with other people. I mean, I was losing out on cool projects and pay raises. I'm a different person today, believe me.
Play with the Special Agent if you will. I'm more inclined to let his comments go without specific reply and let reality eventually catch up with him.
Anyway, what warrants discussion, IMHO, is how to accelerate the maturing process. Personally, I wish that someone had simply fired me (now *there's* a slap with a two-by-four), or let me know that *I* wasn't getting the cool project, or that *I* was getting the miniscule raise. Something, *anything* to let me know how the world saw me (Oh wad some power the giftie gie us...).
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Note that Cygnus isn't just some greedy corporation -- it employs many of the hard-core free software engineers which make up the FSF. These people aren't being held at gunpoint to work there -- they work there because they think it's a great deal to be employed full-time to contribute to free software.
When Cygnus "took control" of gcc from RMS, it was for very good reason. RMS had not been competently maintaining the source tree, and many would-be code contributors who had good solutions to genuine problems were getting increasingly disgusted. The more gung-ho of them formed splinter groups, while others simply walked away. It was a bad situation, and Cygnus dealt with it by starting their own source repository, contributing several remarkable improvements (like Jim Wilson's gcse), and going out of their way to gather up the various splinter-groups that RMS had alienated.
Many people got very excited over the "Experimental GNU Compiler System" and stopped even bothering to submit their code updates to RMS's "official" repository. When RMS finally relented and told Cygnus to go ahead and take over the job, he had essentially a dead project on his hands.
Cygnus is full of genuine FSF engineers trying to do what is best for free software. They are not outsiders trying to take things over.
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with Cygnus or RedHat. In fact, I pretty much despise RedHat
-- Guges --
In general, I like to recommend that people do a little research before they take what Michael says too literally. Unfortunately, Google seems to have got bored with Michael's magnum opus (the page in which he describes his love for the GNU project is particularly fun), but it still lists many of the other mailing lists Michael has tortured over the years.
Is this Cygnus tree what Cywin32 is based on? I was recently digusted when I discovered it was no longer available. I have had Cygwin32 B20 since last summer and decided to see if there was an update available. 1) It took me ages to even find the old B20 release 2) All other references to Cygwin32 were a commercial release by Red Hat. Is there anywhere where I can get binutils, etc, for Win32?
He's obsessed with 4.3BSD, and is trying to recreate pristine sources of it so as to continue to use it well into the next millenium (with as few modifications as possible, of course).
He thinks that 10BaseT is the "evil intruder" in the world of network cabling; 10Base2 is acceptable, but 10Base5 is the One True Cable.
He made his own version of gzip and switched one of the bytes in the header; it's incompatible, but it's Sokolovian.
How do I know this? He used to work at CWRU before he made death threats against the president and VP of IS. Then they threw him in the nuthouse. Apparently he's loose again and on the rampage.
There's already a huge discussion on the gcc mailing-list. Unfortunately for this `free agent', some of his facts are dead-wrong. For instance, Cygnus never did take control of gcc development. In fact the steering committee of former EGCS/now gcc has always been very careful to include representatives from everywhere... and never been controlled by former Cygnus/now redhat. Likewise, the EGCS vs. gcc issues were solved handsomely, thanks to large diplomatic efforts from people involved, so that the project could go on without bump, and with all parties concerned satisfied. Except for some stupid people who are ready to yell `conspiracy' every time something like this appears, there is absolutely no political controversy with the Cygnus tree. Namely, those issues are developer-only, and fairly boring to the mundane user. This has to do with somewhat largish portions of the binutils, gas, gcc, trees being shared, and this increasingly leading to troubles thanks to the differing release schedules of all threes, and a growing need to merge everything in a single CVS repository to avoid needless administrative work. Now, if you want a developer's controversy, take linux's binutils. Those are mostly developped by H.J.Lu, who is doing a great job, but is not playing ball with neither the gcc team nor the binutils team (he's notorious at not stopping to explain what he's doing, and then griping three months later that his work was not included). In fact, by churning private release after private release of binutils from development source, he's rendering a disservice to the open development community at large: since the linux crowd is happy, there is not much pressure to do actual new releases of the real binutils main work, and there is not much test of that work occurring either. This can become serious. It looks more and more like yet a new version of the gcc vs. pgcc split, and we all know how bad this can become, don't we ? (think emacs vs. xemacs)
article at gcc mailing list archive on gnu.org
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
And what was it with the leadin about conspiracies. There is nothing conspiratorial about this, just some historical hiccups.
C.
I sometimes write stuff