Slashdot Mirror
Plug-In Architecture On the Way For GCC
VonGuard writes "This year marks the 25th anniversary of the GNU Operating System. A major part of that system has always been the GNU Compiler Collection. This year, some of the earliest bits of GCC also turn 25, and yet some of the collection's most interesting years of growth may still be ahead. The GCC team announced today that the long-standing discussion over how to allow plug-ins to be written for GCC has been settled. The FSF and the GCC team have decided to apply the GPL to plug-ins. That means all that's left is to build a framework for plug-ins; no small task to be sure. But building this framework should make it easier for people to contribute to the GCC project, and some universities are already working on building windows into the compilation process, with the intent of releasing plug-ins."
The article claims that GNU has produced an operating system, and that GCC is somehow the cornerstone of that "operating system". I don't think the word means what GNU thinks it means. And Stallman's insistence on calling Linux "GNU/Linux" is part and parcel of that misconception.
E pluribus unum
GNU has produced an operating system. It's nowhere near as advanced in functionality as Linux, but it exists, and GCC one of the largest parts of it.
It's true that Stallman is a self-important man who makes himself look arrogant by delineating that GNU tools are part of the operating system but not making the same claim for a whole slew of other important tools.
But however correct the OP's statement, I agree with the reply made to it that the fact it comes apropos of nothing indicates it's a troll.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
You can run a useful open source computer without xorg, you can run a useful computer without java, now that we have things like nexenta (ubuntu userland with opensolaris kernel) we can even go without linux -- but trying to run an open source based box without any of the software that gnu has touched is pretty hard~ (I think some of the BSDs do their own thing for the core, but most of the third-party software which gets installed on top has been touched by the hand of gnu somewhere along the lines)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
To quote the rationale document:
This is the kind of ideological arrogance that drives me up the wall with the FSF and GPL. There is this over riding presumption that they're right, and further more, anything contrary to their aims is "Bad for society". What childish bullshit.
It's not even as if they soften it by making it a question of belief. They could just as easily say "We believe developing non-free software is not good for society". The absolutism in their position reminds me of religious fundamentalism. Which also bugs the shit out of me.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the GNU Operating System.
No, this year marks the 25th year of work on the GNU OS. There is still no GNU OS as such, and it's pretty obvious there never will be.
I'm not saying that there's nothing to show for all that work. The GNU libraries and many GNU utilities are key components in many projects, not the least of which is Linux. (<Sarcasm> Oh, excuse me, GNU/Linux.</Sarcasm> ) These are real achievements, and so is the introduction of a new collaborative model of joint software development.
But the original goal of GNU, to create a free alternative to Unix, has never been achieved. No big loss, there are other free Unix alternatives and even true Unixes for free. I just wish that GNU and its fanboys would stop and ask themselves why they never achieved their primary goal.
Having tried to get involved a few years back, I think I know why. While I don't deny the extree skill of some of the gnu programmers, GCC, Emacs and Gnuplot are ample evidence of this, they lack, or seemed to lack then, any form of cohesive organisation.
There was a distinct impression that if you didn't code in C, you weren't good enough, and that little use should be made of widely available, and equally free technology, because it wasn't 'hard core' enough, or so it seemed. There certainly was no logical reason for it. They spent, in my opinion, far too much time trying to write clever code, and not enough time trying to make things easily accessible for prospective new members. Since those new members would probably bring in new ideas and fresh impetus, I'd have thought this was a priority. Attracting some managers would have helped.
Their mailing list for Hurd showed their problem quite well. In spite of there being plenty of solutions available for spam filtering, they used nothing, which took me somewhat by surprise. This meant I ended up having to sift through literally hundreds of viagra and porn emails each week to try and follow something.
I asked someone else about it, and he had a script he ran himself to clear the spam. Very clever, very geeky, but very useless for those who think they shouldn't have to do that themselves to make such a mailing list usable.
I gave up after a couple of months, with a much better idea why we never got Hurd.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Well, the meaning of the word 'operating system' is subective of course. But the goal of GNU since the start was always to produce a UNIX-like operating system. And the UNIX operating system was always a lot more than just a kernel, it included tools, a shell, a compiler, etc. From the UNIX perspective, the GNU definition of 'operating system' makes perfect sense. Now if you're coming from the microcomputer persective, where an "operating system" was nothing more than the kernel and possibly a shell, you'd obviously be more inclined to simply label the kernel as an operating system. On the other hand, back when DOS was created, it barely would've been considered an operating system by the folks using UNIX and VMS. Indeed, DOS would barely qualify as an operating system today, especially considering what modern BIOSes can do.
LLVM/clang will rise if they convince people to both work on it and to actually release their work to others. Otherwise, we get stuck with a bunch of half-proprietary compilers. There is still a lot of work before we have any clue whether they'll get done or not.
Bruce Perens.
Nice. The Linux kernel guys did this and look at the result--it is a bitch for hardware guys to write drivers for Linux
Bullshit. The result is that it's a bitch for proprietary guys to write binary only drivers for linux.
And you know - why should the GCC & Linux projects make things easy for the proprietary guys? It's not like the proprietary guys go out of their way to make life easier for OSS.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Because biting the hand that feeds you have never been a good strategy. There's not enough open hardware - free operating systems are still dependent on the goodwill of proprietary vendors to be able to support mainstream hardware with anywhere near the same features and performance as users of proprietary OS take for granted.
Granted, this may well change soon, but until then making it hard for hardware developers to provide good Linux drivers is just making things harder for Linux users who have no interest in being dragged into your religious wars.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
Not the developers; the users of GCC benefit (are "fed") by the availability of plugins, proprietary or no. I assume that most developers of GCC are also users, so this benefits the developers as well.
Also, I would hope that the developers of a popular software package would see fit to act in the best interests of their users, rather than fight stupid religious wars over which of proprietary/open is better. Fact is we'll always have both kinds of code, so we should try to get along with each other rather than fight pointlessly.
Unfortunately many free software advocates are more than happy to fight these wars, because they put ideology above the goal of creating great software, making them no better than the greedy corporations they so despise.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
And this is bad because...
Because it violates freedoms 0 to 3? The whole reason for GNU's existence?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns