If one company adopts say, SAP for example, you pretty much do not get any advantage. Why? Simple. You bought a black box, and you run your business according to what the black box can do.
However, if we are talking about open source, and building I.T. services with source code, and not proprietary black boxes, then I disagree.
Why? For the simple reason that when I have the source code I now control the black box, and it is only black to my competitors, not to me. I can add features to the code that my competitors cannot, if I so choose to.
I like the fact you can be magnanimous and release the source code one step behind what your developing.
If we are to believe that natural systems, such as the earth really are quite common, then "prey" and "predator" relationships must exist at all levels in the Universe.
So it is logical to assume that there are technologically advanced civilizations that prey on other civilizations for resources or food.
After all, we do it in our own backyard, so why can't other civilizations?
There is nothing in the rule book that I know of that says just because a civilization has conquered space travel must not be aggressive.
We continue to advance, yet we are still very warlike.
As the saying goes, and is confirmed here in black and white so to speak, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The very idea that a small group of people control this information basically makes these people a propaganda machine, not unlike NAZI Germany.
They simple have more advanced tools at their disposal.
I must admit I was not aware how the Wiki manages itself internally.
But clearly, there has to be a more public review of the process and these individuals cannot be trusted to police themselves.
Even a 75 minute ban is unacceptable. Given the remarks by the power structure, I am inclined to believe that this will only continue to become worse without:
1) A complete review of the policies in public used by the admins.
2) A restructuring of the decision making process to include public debate and review. I mean after all, we are talking about book or reference information, much of which doesn't change over time.
Edits made should be suitable for public or peer review and this process should be open, in similair fashion to edit made to software projects, which anyone can join a list to observe or participate.
The fact of the matter is, NASA and the military never were truly independent organizations. The only reason why the charter was acknowledged is because there had to be a practical political reason/explanation to the taxpayer why we are putting satellites in orbit using military hardware and black budgets.
It is a facade I assure you.
EVERY single shuttle mission has been a military mission. You do not read, or hear about the details of THAT PART of the mission, for obvious reasons.
You only hear about the civilian work that goes on (public scientists).
I am sorry if you think NASA is a PURELY civilian space agency, it isn't, never was.
You do not have to do much digging either to see the Charter is simply an acknowledgment of the civilian applications of space HAPPEN TO INTERSECT with the military goals of space applications.
NASA has two budgets:
1) The budget approved by congress for operating civilian projects.
2) Black Budget: Classified. In fact it is SO classified, nobody knows how much or where the money is for half these "payloads" the shuttle puts into the orbit when they do not have something civilian to take up there.
You do not honestly believe every mission filled the cargo bay in the space shuttle with civilian payloads do you?
I would like to remind everyone here that NASA is NOT a civilian space agency, it a branch of the Department of Defense and if you read the charter you shouldn't be surprised at all about this.
Why do people apply for jobs at a organization, and yet have NO CLUE about who they are working for?
Precisely why, when I bought Stephan Wolframs "A New Kind of Science" that I was dismayed by the fact that a lot of the experiments he conducted could not be replicated without a four thousand dollar layout for his Mathematica product.
A product that is owned by his own company, is closed source and which he posits a great deal in his book.
I think we have to examine closely scientific methods that require a great deal of kick back money in order to replicate the results of experiments.
"We believe that intellectual property licensing is an empowering way to bring innovation to the IT ecosystem," said David Kaefer, general manager of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft."
You know, I found it odd that Andy Grove, a person who is so soundly embedded in an engineering field, would compare the research on materials and physical sciences with biology.
I think he can see the wave of his mortality now very clearly, rushing towards him and he faces it with unreasonable assumptions about the fields that deal with human medicine.
The human being is the single most unique organism in the universe. Nothing else created by the Universe can do what we do. (Knock on SETI wood....but I am pretty confident that is a fact. Prove me wrong.:-))
We laugh, cry, know the time before and after our passing and feel things beyond that which can be measured such as compassion, love, hopelessness.
Unfortunately, more often than not that includes a great deal of selfishness and greed.
Personally, when I see the average person now days I say to myself: "Thank GOD he will only be around for 70 some years or so...."
Most of us are poor human beings. (I count myself in that because I want one of those new 45nm ThinkPAD laptops comming out.....but seriously. Most of my friends point out the fact I have an "unnatural" like of my "laptops". How dare they call my laptop a mere laptop! It my MISTRESS silly....FREAK!)
His comments about the pharm industry are right on of course. It is an industry built on greed. Half of the problem is that the industry only seeks a dollar.
Why in the hell would you invest any more money for example in a liver/cholesterol drug if it is already making you a 40% profit margin and you have the market locked up for 20 some years?
I certainly wouldn't, who CARES about a cure. I can draw a similair example to the energy sector in our country. Gas and Oil companies are making MASSIVE profits, why the hell would you build any more refining capability or search for alternative energy sources at $100 dollars a barrel?
Simply because it feels like August outside in October?
If you try you might even find yourself DEAD if you rock the boat. (I mean poor Sadam of course....maybe not so poor, but don't even THINK about selling oil in anything but US Dollars pal.)
My point is that the free enterprise system is driven by dollars, not by cures or any sort of humane creedo. It is the creedo of free enterprise. However, I do believe we COULD have a biotech sector that moved forward VERY fast like the electronics industry.
But the direction of the research cannot be focused strictly on patents and dollars like it is now.
Not everything is perfectly fitted to the idea of the free enterprise system you know.
For example, take the IIS. Yes, the International Space Station. It is almost done! Nice job and it wasn't a project based on a budget. Thats important. You simply cannot give up! The budget means nothing, it is completing the project which is important.
Given the same scale of things, Medical research needs to have the same sort of backing from the international community. I see it going something like this:
1) A Directorate is setup to request votes on the top 10 human diseases. People elect representitives to have a position on this board with their vote to eliminate a human disease say, Organ Transplants. I mean, if we can stop doing organ transplants and turning people into Frankestein chemical projects for the pharm industry, and actually GROW replacement organs. Who needs cures for organs? Just plug in a new one!
Great idea isn't it? Yeah, I like it too.
So everyone votes and my idea happens to win. (The project goal is to be able to regenerate any human tissue in the human body.) I would start with the heart. (I am the head of the directorate.....:-)
Now, the Directorate seeks funding, does advertising on TV.
"Are you getting old? Do you have Heart Disease? Wouldn't it be great if we could just grow you a new heart and you can dump those 17 pills a day you are taking to keep your ticker running?
I still believe that the reason why Microsoft software is so widely used is because of the piracy or the economics of piracy that surround Microsoft products.
It is a natural extension to get your product into as many hands as possible and then collect on all of the "possibilities" that might develop.
For example, if you do not economically restrict the number of machines that you can deploy a product on, this naturally creates a demand for software from the creation of such a large number of users.
That is just one example, but I think this is a big postive move for RedHat.
USA producing more science and technologists that the market requires?
No kidding?
Wow, news to me!
Everywhere I read "Oh, we have to go over seas for cheap labor because we cannot find anything in the USA. We just don't produce quality science talent or engineering students, in sufficient numbers."
BULL.
I have been saying this for a long time, everywhere I speak about this topic.
We have got plenty of top people. The cost of living standards are too high in the USA to employ them however.
The biggest problem I found with this book is the smack of commercialism.
Mr. Wolfram made every single sort of proof through the use of a tool that costs $4K which he directly profits from (Mathematica) in order to reproduce his experiments in Turing machines.
You know I can remember thinking about mathematics and the legends behind the basic foundations in analysis, calculas and the like. (i.e. Euler and Newton and Kepler et al.)
I thought WOW I must be stupid, these guys just picked up Mathematics no problemo......
Well....not quite. I mean, make no doubt, Newton, Kepler and Euler all where very adept at Mathematics.
But, they also worked VERY....VERY very VERY hard at it.
Can you imagine the PAIN and SUFFERING, Kepler had to go through in building even the most basic elementals of planetary motion by doing the same calculation sometimes 100 times to prevent error?
Even then, he got the calculations wrong for the orbit of Mars and missed the eccentricity factor that would have been a shoe in while he was testing different shapes of orbits for Mars: namely an ellipse.
It would take Kepler WEEKS to perform these calculations, which now I can do in a fraction of a second on my laptop.
The labor required in those days to do mathematics was intense, and highly error prone.
Newton would lock himself away for DAYS barely eating anything performing every possible experiment, and when not satisfied with just experimentation, he wanted quantitative results from the experiment as well.
Has anyone, I mean anyone here gone for days barely eating anything working non stop on a mathematics problem for 18 hours at a time?
You know the "greats" in Mathematics worked at it with super human resolve and zeal, only if you would care to read about this HISTORY of mathematics you would find it as so.
Expect to put in at LEAST as much effort if you want to really join their ranks.
I would like to point out that with tools like: http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ you can bypass the pain and labor of mathematics and get to the core of the matter MUCH faster than Kepler or Newton ever could. So you could literally "cheat" out of the labor these guys had to put in, and put the machine to work doing the calculations to develop methods of computation much quicker to solve problems.
So, although no doubt, these men became literal geniuses, if you look at their lives and what governed their passions with regards to numerical studies, they put in huge amounts of time to the problems they wanted answers to. They earned the right to be called geniuses, it certainly wasn't given to them at birth.
Keep this in mind the next time you are stumped on any sort of mathematics problem. Also keep in mind that like the "greats" you have to be stick with it, and never give up!
"With support being dropped all the time (see above posts)."
I can read. pcc does NOT support multiple cross platform grammars.
Its a fact.
Gcc does. I suspect other languages will be dropped as well if maintainers do not step up to the plate or there is no demand.
"You seem to be looking at a very different compiler (http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070915195203&pid=52)."
I have read the link, and everyone is entitled to their opinions.
The fact remains, gcc is the most widely worked on compiler system, and continues to be worked on and improved because it IS easy to understand and capabilities like multiple back and front ends for code generation make it unique.
Dissent is what drives improvements in all software, particularly GPL software because of the very fact contributors must share their improvements or shut up.
"Tell me what "finished" compiler does _not_ have this. But, there are those that would rather have correct code than the optimized (but regularly incorrect) code that GCC produces (see above link)."
That statement is stupid. GCC like all USEFUL pieces of software are NEVER finished because people continue to work on either improving it or correcting bugs.
Talk about a "Strawman"!
"And what does this have to do with whether the compiler is good? i.e. McDonald's has sold billions of hamburgers. Does that make those hamburgers not horrible for you (see Super Size Me)?"
Wow, now we are comparing software to hamburgers?
It isn't even a good analogy. Let me point out what you missed.
1) The more code a compiler builds, the more paths are tested in its code generation LOGIC. 2) The more paths that are tested in its code generation logic, the more improvements and bug fixes can be applied to make it better.
A hamburger, I am sorry is not as complex to build has a compiler. Although it sounds like your an expert on building burgers and I am not surprised.
"This is total bullshit. Any corporation that might USE such code would have to do so under the BSD license and them using such code IS ALLOWED BY THE LICENSE. Just because it doesn't fit your ideology does NOT make it theft. Get your head out of your ass."
I am not disputing the corporations right to the license as applied as you say. What I am pointing out is that this type of license I feel encourages corporations to profit from others hard work, and not in a positive way.
The reason why GPL software kicks BSD's butt most of the time is because the BSD license has less incentives for people to profit from their labors. It also gives tools to corporations to build software systems to lock out markets.
My case and point would be this link.
We do NOT need to give Microsoft ANY assistance in destroying free software, either BSD or GPL. BSD has an excellent TCP/IP stack, and Microsoft just HELPED themselves to it.
"A counter example of this is WINE. In fact, many parts of WINE actually run faster than there Windows counter parts. Use google to figure out where and by how much."
Err....well. I have used WINE and well it does a poor job of running most Windows programs. Lots of gotchas. I do not think that WINE will be taking over Windows job anytime soon for running anything significant.
Sort of like pcc and gcc. pcc makes a VERY poor gcc.
"They are talking about gcc as a C compiler and that's pretty much it. Because that's the purpose that it's being used for. This is clear from what is even written in the summary i.e. put away your straw-man, we aren't going to buy it."
No, ah, they are not talking about pcc as a C compiler.
Can you READ?
The thread Title is: "Work being done on it too take over GCC's Job?"
Slashdot Mirror
This is a bunch of crap.
I call it as I see it, and this is about as crappy as it gets.
There is no FREAKING way Microsoft can do any of those 8 things if they want to stay in business.
So this is all PR.
Microsoft is the poster child of lock in, proprietary closed and SECRET API's.
I wouldn't take any of this seriously and really wonder why this even made Slashdot news.
What a joke.
I also do not believe any of the crapola this guy is espousing about "we can learn from each other".
Crap crap crap.
Open source doesn't need Microsoft PERIOD.
If open source needs anything it is MORE PEOPLE writing MORE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.
It sure in the hell doesn't need ANYTHING from Microsoft.
-Hack
You both are on crack I am afraid.
I just watched a company go out of business up here in Green Bay Wisconsin.
Why?
Simply due to the fact that they decided to modify their SAP installation.
What you mention as possibly does not make it a wise thing to do.
Simply because if you do not treat SAP as a black box, your going to invest millions to pull over your code during the next upgrade cycle.
Therefore, SAP customers for the most part recognize this and change their business models to suit the SAP installation and leave the thing alone.
-Hack
PS: Ignorant indeed.
I agree.
If one company adopts say, SAP for example, you pretty much do not get any advantage. Why? Simple. You bought a black box, and you run your business according to what the black box can do.
However, if we are talking about open source, and building I.T. services with source code, and not proprietary black boxes, then I disagree.
Why? For the simple reason that when I have the source code I now control the black box, and it is only black to my competitors, not to me. I can add features to the code that my competitors cannot, if I so choose to.
I like the fact you can be magnanimous and release the source code one step behind what your developing.
-Hack
One of my wishes for this New Year:
Everyone who sells software and you do not include the source, I hope you rot in red ink.
-Hack
Merry Freakin Christmas. :-)
-Hack
If we are to believe that natural systems, such as the earth really are quite common, then "prey" and "predator" relationships must exist at all levels in the Universe.
So it is logical to assume that there are technologically advanced civilizations that prey on other civilizations for resources or food.
After all, we do it in our own backyard, so why can't other civilizations?
There is nothing in the rule book that I know of that says just because a civilization has conquered space travel must not be aggressive.
We continue to advance, yet we are still very warlike.
-Hack
As a Non Fat, Local bearded slob Level 70 Warlock, I find myself offended.
Siphon Life, Curse of Agony, Corruption and Immolation on you!
Your going to die any minute now....
-Hack
If true the fallout is very damaging from this.
As the saying goes, and is confirmed here in black and white so to speak, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The very idea that a small group of people control this information basically makes these people a propaganda machine, not unlike NAZI Germany.
They simple have more advanced tools at their disposal.
I must admit I was not aware how the Wiki manages itself internally.
But clearly, there has to be a more public review of the process and these individuals cannot be trusted to police themselves.
Even a 75 minute ban is unacceptable. Given the remarks by the power structure, I am inclined to believe that this will only continue to become worse without:
1) A complete review of the policies in public used by the admins.
2) A restructuring of the decision making process to include public debate and review. I mean after all, we are talking about book or reference information, much of which doesn't change over time.
Edits made should be suitable for public or peer review and this process should be open, in similair fashion to edit made to software projects, which anyone can join a list to observe or participate.
-Hack
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pasa/is_199506/ai_900884918
Is one example.
The fact of the matter is, NASA and the military never were truly independent organizations. The only reason why the charter was acknowledged is because there had to be a practical political reason/explanation to the taxpayer why we are putting satellites in orbit using military hardware and black budgets.
It is a facade I assure you.
EVERY single shuttle mission has been a military mission. You do not read, or hear about the details of THAT PART of the mission, for obvious reasons.
You only hear about the civilian work that goes on (public scientists).
I am sorry if you think NASA is a PURELY civilian space agency, it isn't, never was.
You do not have to do much digging either to see the Charter is simply an acknowledgment of the civilian applications of space HAPPEN TO INTERSECT with the military goals of space applications.
NASA has two budgets:
1) The budget approved by congress for operating civilian projects.
2) Black Budget: Classified. In fact it is SO classified, nobody knows how much or where the money is for half these "payloads" the shuttle puts into the orbit when they do not have something civilian to take up there.
You do not honestly believe every mission filled the cargo bay in the space shuttle with civilian payloads do you?
-Hack
I would like to remind everyone here that NASA is NOT a civilian space agency, it a branch of the Department of Defense and if you read the charter you shouldn't be surprised at all about this.
Why do people apply for jobs at a organization, and yet have NO CLUE about who they are working for?
-Hack
Easily.
I showed him the cost of exchange upgrades, virus crapola vs. a commerical support license for Zimbra.
I really don't need it as it is freely downloadable, but we have to do migration so we really need to purchase it.
But just one years worth. It is all open source so by that time I should have it figured out pretty well to support it myself in house.
-Hack
http://www.zimbra.com/
We are replacing all of our Exchange users and dumping exchange by the end of the year.
It is an open source free replacement for Exchange.
Very nice and integrates well with Sunbird (Thunderbird Calander).
-hack
Sorry.
Had to Fork it, as someone looked in the repo.
*Sigh*
-Hack
Precisely why, when I bought Stephan Wolframs "A New Kind of Science" that I was dismayed by the fact that a lot of the experiments he conducted could not be replicated without a four thousand dollar layout for his Mathematica product.
A product that is owned by his own company, is closed source and which he posits a great deal in his book.
I think we have to examine closely scientific methods that require a great deal of kick back money in order to replicate the results of experiments.
It seems very, well......unseemly.
-Hack
"We believe that intellectual property licensing is an empowering way to bring innovation to the IT ecosystem," said David Kaefer, general manager of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft."
Wow.
Who else wants to drink the Cool-Aid?
-Hackus
You know, I found it odd that Andy Grove, a person who is so soundly embedded in an engineering field, would compare the research on materials and physical sciences with biology.
:-))
I think he can see the wave of his mortality now very clearly, rushing towards him and he faces it with unreasonable assumptions about the fields that deal with human medicine.
The human being is the single most unique organism in the universe. Nothing else created by the Universe can do what we do. (Knock on SETI wood....but I am pretty confident that is a fact. Prove me wrong.
We laugh, cry, know the time before and after our passing and feel things beyond that which can be measured such as compassion, love, hopelessness.
Unfortunately, more often than not that includes a great deal of selfishness and greed.
Personally, when I see the average person now days I say to myself: "Thank GOD he will only be around for 70 some years or so...."
Most of us are poor human beings. (I count myself in that because I want one of those new 45nm ThinkPAD laptops comming out.....but seriously. Most of my friends point out the fact I have an "unnatural" like of my "laptops". How dare they call my laptop a mere laptop! It my MISTRESS silly....FREAK!)
His comments about the pharm industry are right on of course. It is an industry built on greed. Half of the problem is that the industry only seeks a dollar.
Why in the hell would you invest any more money for example in a liver/cholesterol drug if it is already making you a 40% profit margin and you have the market locked up for 20 some years?
I certainly wouldn't, who CARES about a cure. I can draw a similair example to the energy sector in our country. Gas and Oil companies are making MASSIVE profits, why the hell would you build any more refining capability or search for alternative energy sources at $100 dollars a barrel?
Simply because it feels like August outside in October?
If you try you might even find yourself DEAD if you rock the boat. (I mean poor Sadam of course....maybe not so poor, but don't even THINK about selling oil in anything but US Dollars pal.)
My point is that the free enterprise system is driven by dollars, not by cures or any sort of humane creedo. It is the creedo of free enterprise. However, I do believe we COULD have a biotech sector that moved forward VERY fast like the electronics industry.
But the direction of the research cannot be focused strictly on patents and dollars like it is now.
Not everything is perfectly fitted to the idea of the free enterprise system you know.
For example, take the IIS. Yes, the International Space Station. It is almost done! Nice job and it wasn't a project based on a budget. Thats important. You simply cannot give up! The budget means nothing, it is completing the project which is important.
Given the same scale of things, Medical research needs to have the same sort of backing from the international community. I see it going something like this:
1) A Directorate is setup to request votes on the top 10 human diseases. People elect representitives to have a position on this board with their vote to eliminate a human disease say, Organ Transplants. I mean, if we can stop doing organ transplants and turning people into Frankestein chemical projects for the pharm industry, and actually GROW replacement organs. Who needs cures for organs? Just plug in a new one!
Great idea isn't it? Yeah, I like it too.
So everyone votes and my idea happens to win. (The project goal is to be able to regenerate any human tissue in the human body.) I would start with the heart. (I am the head of the directorate.....:-)
Now, the Directorate seeks funding, does advertising on TV.
"Are you getting old? Do you have Heart Disease? Wouldn't it be great if we could just grow you a new heart and you can dump those 17 pills a day you are taking to keep your ticker running?
I still believe that the reason why Microsoft software is so widely used is because of the piracy or the economics of piracy that surround Microsoft products.
It is a natural extension to get your product into as many hands as possible and then collect on all of the "possibilities" that might develop.
For example, if you do not economically restrict the number of machines that you can deploy a product on, this naturally creates a demand for software from the creation of such a large number of users.
That is just one example, but I think this is a big postive move for RedHat.
Fedora can be equated in a similar fashion.
-Hack
She has fulfilled her end of the bargain and has become a respectable tax paying citizen for the empire.
Leave her go.
She saved the empire some cash and corrected rehabilitated herself.
The question is, why did she change her direction?
That is the more important question.
-Hack
USA producing more science and technologists that the market requires?
No kidding?
Wow, news to me!
Everywhere I read "Oh, we have to go over seas for cheap labor because we cannot find anything in the USA. We just don't produce quality science talent or engineering students, in sufficient numbers."
BULL.
I have been saying this for a long time, everywhere I speak about this topic.
We have got plenty of top people. The cost of living standards are too high in the USA to employ them however.
-Hack
Leave my internet protocols ALONE thank you very much.
We will do quite OK without you meddling with our open standards.
We only need linux, an open TCP stack, and anything that happens I am sure we can handle it with JUST those tools.
Well, that and an army of a million penguin volunteers.
We will do fine, really.
Please peddle your proprietary CRAP OLA somewhere else.
Thank you.
-Hack
The biggest problem I found with this book is the smack of commercialism.
Mr. Wolfram made every single sort of proof through the use of a tool that costs $4K which he directly profits from (Mathematica) in order to reproduce his experiments in Turing machines.
I found that slightly disingenuous.
-Hack
Ah, a topic of discontent.
You know I can remember thinking about mathematics and the legends behind the basic foundations in analysis, calculas and the like. (i.e. Euler and Newton and Kepler et al.)
I thought WOW I must be stupid, these guys just picked up Mathematics no problemo......
Well....not quite. I mean, make no doubt, Newton, Kepler and Euler all where very adept at Mathematics.
But, they also worked VERY....VERY very VERY hard at it.
Can you imagine the PAIN and SUFFERING, Kepler had to go through in building even the most basic elementals of planetary motion by doing the same calculation sometimes 100 times to prevent error?
Even then, he got the calculations wrong for the orbit of Mars and missed the eccentricity factor that would have been a shoe in while he was testing different shapes of orbits for Mars: namely an ellipse.
It would take Kepler WEEKS to perform these calculations, which now I can do in a fraction of a second on my laptop.
The labor required in those days to do mathematics was intense, and highly error prone.
Newton would lock himself away for DAYS barely eating anything performing every possible experiment, and when not satisfied with just experimentation, he wanted quantitative results from the experiment as well.
Has anyone, I mean anyone here gone for days barely eating anything working non stop on a mathematics problem for 18 hours at a time?
You know the "greats" in Mathematics worked at it with super human resolve and zeal, only if you would care to read about this HISTORY of mathematics you would find it as so.
Expect to put in at LEAST as much effort if you want to really join their ranks.
I would like to point out that with tools like: http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ you can bypass the pain and labor of mathematics and get to the core of the matter MUCH faster than Kepler or Newton ever could. So you could literally "cheat" out of the labor these guys had to put in, and put the machine to work doing the calculations to develop methods of computation much quicker to solve problems.
So, although no doubt, these men became literal geniuses, if you look at their lives and what governed their passions with regards to numerical studies, they put in huge amounts of time to the problems they wanted answers to. They earned the right to be called geniuses, it certainly wasn't given to them at birth.
Keep this in mind the next time you are stumped on any sort of mathematics problem. Also keep in mind that like the "greats" you have to be stick with it, and never give up!
-Hack
You know, when I first read about this I thought it was a joke.
I still cannot believe it.
It is ridiculous, really.
-Hack
Nice post.
For now you can post this stuff in the open, but bare in mind.......
THEY ARE WATCHING.
-Hack
You posted a number of very half truths.
"With support being dropped all the time (see above posts)."
I can read. pcc does NOT support multiple cross platform grammars.
Its a fact.
Gcc does. I suspect other languages will be dropped as well if maintainers do not step up to the plate or there is no demand.
"You seem to be looking at a very different compiler (http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070915195203&pid=52)."
I have read the link, and everyone is entitled to their opinions.
The fact remains, gcc is the most widely worked on compiler system, and continues to be worked on and improved because it IS easy to understand and capabilities like multiple back and front ends for code generation make it unique.
Dissent is what drives improvements in all software, particularly GPL software because of the very fact contributors must share their improvements or shut up.
"Tell me what "finished" compiler does _not_ have this. But, there are those that would rather have correct code than the optimized (but regularly incorrect) code that GCC produces (see above link)."
That statement is stupid. GCC like all USEFUL pieces of software are NEVER finished because people continue to work on either improving it or correcting bugs.
Talk about a "Strawman"!
"And what does this have to do with whether the compiler is good? i.e. McDonald's has sold billions of hamburgers. Does that make those hamburgers not horrible for you (see Super Size Me)?"
Wow, now we are comparing software to hamburgers?
It isn't even a good analogy. Let me point out what you missed.
1) The more code a compiler builds, the more paths are tested in its code generation LOGIC.
2) The more paths that are tested in its code generation logic, the more improvements and bug fixes can be applied to make it better.
A hamburger, I am sorry is not as complex to build has a compiler. Although it sounds like your an expert on building burgers and I am not surprised.
"This is total bullshit. Any corporation that might USE such code would have to do so under the BSD license and them using such code IS ALLOWED BY THE LICENSE. Just because it doesn't fit your ideology does NOT make it theft. Get your head out of your ass."
I am not disputing the corporations right to the license as applied as you say. What I am pointing out is that this type of license I feel encourages corporations to profit from others hard work, and not in a positive way.
The reason why GPL software kicks BSD's butt most of the time is because the BSD license has less incentives for people to profit from their labors. It also gives tools to corporations to build software systems to lock out markets.
My case and point would be this link.
We do NOT need to give Microsoft ANY assistance in destroying free software, either BSD or GPL. BSD has an excellent TCP/IP stack, and Microsoft just HELPED themselves to it.
(et. al. http://www.hu.freebsd.org/hu/arch/2001/Jun/2413.html)
"A counter example of this is WINE. In fact, many parts of WINE actually run faster than there Windows counter parts. Use google to figure out where and by how much."
Err....well. I have used WINE and well it does a poor job of running most Windows programs. Lots of gotchas. I do not think that WINE will be taking over Windows job anytime soon for running anything significant.
Sort of like pcc and gcc. pcc makes a VERY poor gcc.
"They are talking about gcc as a C compiler and that's pretty much it. Because that's the purpose that it's being used for. This is clear from what is even written in the summary i.e. put away your straw-man, we aren't going to buy it."
No, ah, they are not talking about pcc as a C compiler.
Can you READ?
The thread Title is: "Work being done on it too take over GCC's Job?"
Now, I do not wish to be pedantic but, i