PB: The history of the gcc/egcs/pgcc is also very misleading.
RM: Unfortunately, the facts are somewhat murky, and more than a little disputed. I notice that my brief account does, for whatever it's worth, match [Eric Raymond's].
Well, your account goes well beyond ESR's, for example in emphasising the Pentium optimizations as being the major factor in the fork. The real problem with pgcc was that it was very poorly written, not Stallman's stubborness!
PB: Finally, Stallman did not write glibc.
RM: Not guilty. I made no such claim.
Let me quote your words directly: For the GNU Project, Richard M. Stallman's (remember him?) GNU Project wrote the GNU C Library, or glibc, starting in the 1980s.
PB: The mention of non-free BSD-based commercial Unixes implies that these implementation came after the release of the free BSDs and the AT&T lawsuit; they long pre-date both.
RM: Ditto. I implied nothing of the kind.
Perhaps not directly. But the way the article is written, one gets that impression, because the commercial Unixes are mentioned in the same paragraph (and after) the mentiond of the BSDs and the law-suit. That is what I mean by "misleading statements". Perhaps I should have said "misleading exposition": When you put two facts next to each other in a historical background piece, the natural assumption is that the events follow in that order, or that there is some logical connection. Careful writing (and proof-reading) means minimizing such misleading inferences.
While I fully agree with the thrust of the article, and it provides several good examples of forking, unfortunately the article is full of mistakes and misleading statements.
For example, the article states that "Lucid Emacs" was proprietary, and implies that it predates the GPL. Both are false: Lucid Emacs was based on GNU Emacs 18. Lucid Emacs and Xemacs have always been released under the GPL. And the aricle left out one major reason why a merge would be very difficult: The Xemacs people do not require copyright assignments for donated code, and Stallman does require such paperwork.
The history of the gcc/egcs/pgcc is also very misleading.
Finally, Stallman did not write glibc. The original author/maintainer was Roland McGrath; the current author/maintainer is Ulrich Drepper.
The mention of non-free BSD-based commercial Unixes implies that these implementation came after the release of the free BSDs and the AT&T lawsuit; they long pre-date both.
Re:Please try to get your facts right ...
on
GCC-2.95 in July
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· Score: 4
I don't know why my correction was listed as from "Anonymous Coward". I wrote it. --Per Bothner bothner@cygnus.com.
I think you are talking about that cop in Callifornia who killed the mayor and someone else because "he looked at me funny".... The mayor was coming down hard on police corruption and this guy was about as corrupt as they came.
You've got many of the facts quite wrong. George Moscone was elected to mayor of San Francisco, backed by a liberal alliance. One of the members of the Board of Supervisors were Dan White, a conservative ex-cop and ex-firefighter. Another was Harvey Milk, a grassroots politician who I believe was the first openly gay elected politican in SF. Milk and Moscone were allies, and White felt relatively powerless, plus he was hurting financially on the low supervisor pay. He tended his resignation, which Moscone accepted. White's supporters convinced him to change his mind, but Moscone refused to give him his job back. White climbed through baseroom window to bypass the metal detectors, and then shot Moscone and Milk. This happened in 1978. Diane Feinstein (later mayor and now US senator) made the announcement. White was convicted of a lesser charge (manslaugher?). The "Twinkie defense" was brought up in the case, but the larger issue was that the police and prosecution were basically on White's side. When the verdict was announced on what was later called "White night", there were riots. White committed suicide after he was released.
I particularly enjoyed their debugging anecdotes, especially their hubris in discussing their own bugs.
That's a rather eccentric use of the word "hubris". I suspect the reviewer might have meant to use "humility." (Hint: they are opposites.)
This is too good to be true.
on
Java for EGCS
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· Score: 1
Anyone one know if this circumvents Java's array bounds checking? I suspect it doesn't. When using a good JIT, this is the biggest impediment to fast Java (at least with my code).
This has nothing to do with the FSF or egcs. (If it is, they are keeping something from us!) The main problem with "Cygnus" is that there are just too many damn companies named "Cygnus something". A lesser but real problem is that it is not obvious how to spell it given the pronounciation (it does sounds like "sickness") or vice versa. Our CEO was complaining about having to spell "Cygnus" everytime he calls up someone.
This is so ridiculous. If you had been at LinuxWorld you would not say that Gnome can't win. It is already winning in important ways, including mindshare. (There was a large Gnome presence at LinuxWorld, but very little KDE presence.) Gnome 1.0 has a lot of functionality and sexiness. Ok, it is not as stable as it should be, but this is 1.0 after all.
There is no need for either Gnome or KDE or "lose". From all I've seen and heard, KDE is quite good, too. (At this point, probably better.) There is nothing wrong with giving people a choice - that is what Linux is all about.
I'm wondering how legal it is to threaten to fire someone for revealing their own salary. It seems like an obvious anti-competitive restraint of trade. Coercing someone into agreeing by making then sign an employment agreement does not necessarily make it legal! You can't sign away your rights if the courts think upholding the contract would be contrary to the public interest.
Slashdot Mirror
RM: Unfortunately, the facts are somewhat murky, and more than a little disputed. I notice that my brief account does, for whatever it's worth, match [Eric Raymond's].
Well, your account goes well beyond ESR's, for example in emphasising the Pentium optimizations as being the major factor in the fork. The real problem with pgcc was that it was very poorly written, not Stallman's stubborness!
PB: Finally, Stallman did not write glibc.
RM: Not guilty. I made no such claim.
Let me quote your words directly: For the GNU Project, Richard M. Stallman's (remember him?) GNU Project wrote the GNU C Library, or glibc, starting in the 1980s.
PB: The mention of non-free BSD-based commercial Unixes implies that these implementation came after the release of the free BSDs and the AT&T lawsuit; they long pre-date both.
RM: Ditto. I implied nothing of the kind.
Perhaps not directly. But the way the article is written, one gets that impression, because the commercial Unixes are mentioned in the same paragraph (and after) the mentiond of the BSDs and the law-suit. That is what I mean by "misleading statements". Perhaps I should have said "misleading exposition": When you put two facts next to each other in a historical background piece, the natural assumption is that the events follow in that order, or that there is some logical connection. Careful writing (and proof-reading) means minimizing such misleading inferences.
For example, the article states that "Lucid Emacs" was proprietary, and implies that it predates the GPL. Both are false: Lucid Emacs was based on GNU Emacs 18. Lucid Emacs and Xemacs have always been released under the GPL. And the aricle left out one major reason why a merge would be very difficult: The Xemacs people do not require copyright assignments for donated code, and Stallman does require such paperwork.
The history of the gcc/egcs/pgcc is also very misleading.
Finally, Stallman did not write glibc. The original author/maintainer was Roland McGrath; the current author/maintainer is Ulrich Drepper.
The mention of non-free BSD-based commercial Unixes implies that these implementation came after the release of the free BSDs and the AT&T lawsuit; they long pre-date both.
I don't know why my correction was listed as from "Anonymous Coward". I wrote it.
--Per Bothner bothner@cygnus.com.
I think you are talking about that cop in Callifornia who killed the mayor and someone else because "he looked at me funny". ... The mayor was coming down hard on police corruption and this guy was about as corrupt as they came.
You've got many of the facts quite wrong. George Moscone was elected to mayor of San Francisco, backed by a liberal alliance. One of the members of the Board of Supervisors were Dan White, a conservative ex-cop and ex-firefighter. Another was Harvey Milk, a grassroots politician who I believe was the first openly gay elected politican in SF. Milk and Moscone were allies, and White felt relatively powerless, plus he was hurting financially on the low supervisor pay. He tended his resignation, which Moscone accepted. White's supporters convinced him to change his mind, but Moscone refused to give him his job back. White climbed through baseroom window to bypass the metal detectors, and then shot Moscone and Milk. This happened in 1978. Diane Feinstein (later mayor and now US senator) made the announcement. White was convicted of a lesser charge (manslaugher?). The "Twinkie defense" was brought up in the case, but the larger issue was that the police and prosecution were basically on White's side. When the verdict was announced on what was later called "White night", there were riots. White committed suicide after he was released.
I particularly enjoyed their debugging anecdotes, especially their hubris in discussing their own bugs.
That's a rather eccentric use of the word "hubris". I suspect the reviewer might have meant to use "humility." (Hint: they are opposites.)
Anyone one know if this circumvents Java's array bounds checking? I suspect it doesn't. When using a good JIT, this is the biggest impediment to fast Java (at least with my code).
Compile with -fno-bounds-check.
This has nothing to do with the FSF or egcs. (If it is, they are keeping something from us!) The main problem with "Cygnus" is that there are just too many damn companies named "Cygnus something". A lesser but real problem is that it is not obvious how to spell it given the pronounciation (it does sounds like "sickness") or vice versa. Our CEO was complaining about having to spell "Cygnus" everytime he calls up someone.
Wrong, Cygnus ("the swan") is the name of a constallation. Its brightest star is Deneb.
This is so ridiculous. If you had been at LinuxWorld you would not say that Gnome can't win. It is already winning in important ways, including mindshare. (There was a large Gnome presence at LinuxWorld, but very little KDE presence.) Gnome 1.0 has a lot of functionality and sexiness. Ok, it is not as stable as it should be, but this is 1.0 after all.
There is no need for either Gnome or KDE or "lose". From all I've seen and heard, KDE is quite good, too. (At this point, probably better.) There is nothing wrong with giving people a choice - that is what Linux is all about.
I'm wondering how legal it is to threaten to fire someone for revealing their own salary. It seems like an obvious anti-competitive restraint of trade. Coercing someone into agreeing by making then sign an employment agreement does not necessarily make it legal! You can't sign away your rights if the courts think upholding the contract would be contrary to the public interest.