Sorry, folks. I badly want Wine to work. It doesn't. It isn't even close to working. Yes, I know that 90% or so of the API has been implemented, sort of, but the remainder will take years at the current pace.
MainWin, on the other hand, works. It has problems, but lots of companies are shipping software that runs on top of MainWin.
If you've got 2 people whose native language is not the same, English is almost certainly what they'll speak to each other...
Unless one of the two is Dutch. Those folks are amazing (my old German teacher says "the Dutch have mouths shaped for languages). Many Dutch people speak four or more languages. I was at a workshop in Italy once, watching this Dutch woman I know carrying on conversions in English, German, Dutch, and Italian all at once, switching languages as she talked to each person at the table. And she doesn't think of herself as an outstanding linguist, that kind of language ability is considered typical.
You shouldn't be surprised to hear ESR's writings compared to Marxism by scholars. He's analyzing the world in a similar way as Marx did: he's looking at groups of people and what their economic interests are, and he assumes that economic interests (in a general sense) are primary, and he's looking at the dynamics of the relationships between these groups or classes.
The difference between Marxists, capitalist-libertarians, and Randroids isn't in the way they analyze the world; they only disagree about which class of people should triumph.
Look at "Atlas Shrugged". It's very close in structure to many socialist realist fantasies: the class that does all the work rebels against oppression by the shiftless rulers. Rand just split the population in a different way, moving all the common folk into the "shiftless ruler" camp and having the technologists rebel.
In fact, the writings of a lot of pro-capitalist folk these days is just inverse Marxism: like Marx, they assume that human beings are fundamentally economic creatures and act out of economic motives, and that the ideas people hold are closely linked to their class interests. The only difference is about who should win.
Oh, come on. The paper is a better refutation of Noosphere than it is of CatB. Eric says Open Source is like the Potlatch (a gift economy). The paper shows that it is more like the scientific community, that this is a much better model.
... that articles attacking spelling and grammar errors by others are almost full of errors (see above)?
You write: I don't think one can dismiss ESR's ideas merely because they will never become reality....
Excuse me: in his series of papers (CatB, the Noosphere paper, etc), ESR was claiming that he was describing reality. That's what the paper was discussing! Does Open Source actually work the way ESR says it does?
The paper makes a good case that Open Source works a lot more like academic science than like the Potlatch. It would be nice if the paper were better organized, true.
You say you sensed a political agenda. I'm shocked.. ESR's writings are, of course, highly political. If you refuse to look at the political meaning of anything, the consequence is that others will find it easier to rule you.
You object to the fact that the paper discusses the relationship of Open Source to socialism and communism. How could such a paper avoid this? After all, if it's going to respond to the critics, it has to take this on (or haven't you noticed how many people have called us a bunch of commies).
Your reading comprehension is also poor, since you attribute a meaning to the paper that does not exist. The paper does not contain the major premise of your syllogism (Open source is like communism), in fact, it refutes it.
You don't seem to understand the point of the reference to Lysenkoism. He's basically talking about political correctness: certain things cannot be criticized. You erroneously think that he's taking about the particular scientific beliefs Lysenko had. Rather, he's talking about the fact that scientists with the wrong beliefs were run out of science, just like many slashdotters who point out that Linux is not perfect are also attacked.
Matt, your reasoning and your reading comprehension are sloppy. First, you mistakenly assume that the paper is discussing CatB and ESR and nothing else. The author is seeking to describe the entire movement, not just ESR, and quotes dozens of people. You seem to think that it is a premise of the paper that ESR is a fundamentalist, and that if he is a pragmatist, the entire paper falls.
The paper refutes many points that ESR has made quite effectively, but it is a refutation of specific writings by ESR, not of ESR as a person. So ESR's beliefs that don't appear in the papers don't matter that much (after all, surely ESR has changed his opinion on some matters since he wrote CatB).
Then, you admit that you haven't read the article! (This is fairly obvious).
But that isn't nearly as lame as the fact that at least three moderators wasted their bonus points on you.
Eric, when will you start acknowledging Bruce Perens' considerable ongoing contributions to the cause? Your continued sniping at him only makes you look bad.
We all need second-guessers, because none of us is perfect. Bruce's second-guessing of you resulted in a better license from Apple (you would have let them get away with too much, not because you're a bad guy but simply because you made a mistake).
As far as I'm concerned, you and Bruce have pretty much the same job: companies are contacting both of you for advice on software licensing; journalists are contacting both of you to get an understanding of the movement, both of you are advocates for open source, etc. You each have your strengths and weaknesses. This isn't Highlander; it is not true that "there can be only one".
The Unix companies all thought that their main competition was each other, so they messed things up and did their best to break source-compatibility between the different Unix flavors. Meanwhile people were tossing out their Unix systems and putting in NT.
It would be a disaster for Linux if the vendors start thinking of each other as the primary competition -- because it means they will be motivated to break compatibility.
SuSE is certainly competing with Red Hat, but each company can do far better by taking away users from Microsoft than either can by trying to take users away from each other.
You say "Alan should have gotten the complete list". Clearly you have no respect for Alan's time. He's a busy person. The moderation system lets the slashdot regulars vote on the best questions and reduces the amount of stuff Alan needs to respond to.
The BSD license permits someone to add new code to existing BSD code, and then to add a new license, as long as the original notice is kept. If you think that it is wrong for someone to use this permission, it follows that you think BSD licensing is wrong.
BSDers don't care at all if the license on the derivative work says "All rights reserved", no copying or distribution, pay thousands of dollars, go to jail if you break it. But they scream, scream, scream if the new license says "GPL". Why is this?
Please note: I don't want to change your sacred license. I got my degree at Berkeley, and I produced vast amounts of free software with a license just like what BSD is now (we never had the advertising clause). But if someone made a derivative work of my code and put the GPL on it, I wouldn't object in any way.
This remark makes no sense whatsoever. The BSD license already permits extensions to be totally proprietary. Why do BSD advocates care if someone makes an extension or fork off the BSD tree and GPLs it, when they don't object to someone who makes a fork off the tree that is totally proprietary?
It's really strange. BSDers politely request people to give their changes back, but if they choose not to (e.g. put the code into Solaris or some such) they don't object. But they scream if someone takes the same code and puts it into a GPL program. This is stupid. Even if BSD people can't use the code directly, they can study it for ideas, which is something that they can't do with proprietary extensions. (And yes, BSD snobs, BSD kernel developers have learned a considerable amount from work that first appeared in the Linux space, and of course considerable knowledge has flowed the other way as well).
If someone takes a BSD distribution and slaps the GPL on it, the original BSD distribution is still available. Note that RMS does not advocate doing things like this; while he prefers copyleft, he thinks that cooperation with the maintainers of non-copylefted free software and avoiding forks is more important. But if someone else does it, it really doesn't matter.
UCB has only removed demands for credit to the University of California. Other people who have added code to BSD have inserted demands for credit to them, and for such code, the advertising clause is still in effect.
For code that only demands credit to Berkeley, the conflict is gone and it can now be freely linked to GPL code.
Yes, companies can legally snoop all they want on their employees. They can also demand that everyone piss in a bottle once per day while the company doctor watches, sing the company song, etc. But only people with no talent or valuable skills should go along with such policies. In case you haven't noticed, we are currently in a sellers' market for technical talent.
If you are a sysadmin at a company that demands that you snoop through peoples' mail, and you feel that this violates your ethics, don't go along, and, if necessary, leave. Explain to your employer that, while you agree that it is legal, you feel that it is unethical and you will not participate.
The only reasons companies can force you to put up with this crap is because too many employees don't have any backbone. The reason for respecting employees' privacy is because it is the right thing to do. Exceptions should be made for people who aren't getting the job done.
Your article on evolt spreads outdated information -- because Unisys changed their minds since the "Unisys Clarifies Policy" article you reference was published. Unisys has revoked their freeware exception and has been actively going after freeware authors. You did notice that it isn't on the Unisys web site, didn't you? They flushed the original page down the Orwellian memory hole.
Unfortunately, the word of most corporations is worthless if it is not in a legally binding contract.
If you give an organization your email address, and they use it to spam you, this is a bad thing, but it is not a privacy violation (unless they sell the address to someone else).
So it's bogus to say that TrustE is not a good privacy policy because it doesn't prevent people from "one bite per customer" spamming. Instead, ask for something like TrustE as a minimum.
The following is a letter I just sent to the nice folks at Amazon.
Hey people:
(I was considering the salutation "Ladies and Gentlemen", but ladies and gentlemen don't behave as you have.)
Don't you guys know that even as I type this, paranoid companies all over Silicon Valley (and believe me, we are all paranoid) are installing blocks to prevent their employees from connecting to Amazon?
As for your "top 7 questions" you list on your "Purchase Circles" web page, are you really claiming that these are questions that real people are asking you? I'm sure that the real "top 7 questions" you are getting are:
How dare you?
What were you thinking?
Do you want to wreck your business?
Where do I send the cease and desist order to?
What kind of pea brains work for your marketing department?
Why do you think you have the right to violate our privacy in this way?
How do we get the page for our organization removed?
My wife and I have frequently bought books from Amazon. We will not buy another book until two things happen:
"Purchase circles" are gone.
You institute a decent privacy policy (e.g. join TrustE or something similar).
I have also recommended that out network support staff cut off our company from Amazon. People can buy books from home if they really want to.
I'm in my company's office in Germany at the moment, but nevertheless I'll use US law here, since it's the only stuff I'm familiar with.
The US 4th amendment reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The only ambiguous term in the above is what is "reasonable", so the courts determine that. But generally speaking they decide whether a person would have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a given situation. And no, I don't think it's reasonable for some cop to go scanning houses at random to see what he can see; I at least hope that judges would agree.
It seems to me that if a cop has a search warrant or arrest warrant, that it would be fine to use this technology to execute the warrant. But without a warrant, no dice. It's an unreasonable search.
Sigh. If anyone points out that an organization that, in real life, would be filled with non-whites is being portrayed as all-white, people who are comfortable with pretending that these all-white artificial worlds are natural start screaming about the PC police. So the American TV is full of shows set in an all-white New York or an all-white LA, when in real life, whites are a minority in both cities. Makes you kind of wonder whether all of the other folks were carted away. Similar, Vancouver has a very large Asian population, mainly Chinese.
Note that I'm not advocating artificial diversity (like those mixed-race gangs you see on TV sometimes -- any given gang is likely to be all people of the same race). But I think it would be hard to find a techically oriented company of any size on the west coast of the US or Canada that doesn't have anyone of Chinese or Indian ancestry.
So in this sense, what's being pointed out is a kind of error in the presentation of the strip. UF could show Linux boxes crashing every day, and you would scream. The author could reply that it is possible for Linux boxes to crash, but you'd be correct to complain that that is very rare. I suppose he could then accuse you of being with the Linux PC police, but such an argument would be stupid.
Similarly, it is possible that in the whole history of an ISP, no non-white person ever works there or even visits the company. It's just that this is so wildly unlikely in the real world as to be peculiar.
If the action is really "utterly indefensible", then yes, there are grounds for a lawsuit: the stockholders with a 51% interest can't just decide to take all the money away from the folks with 49%, or run the company into the ground because there's a majority stockholder who's nuts. But according to some scholars (see below), such suits are almost impossible to win unless conflict of interest or improper motivation can be shown.
Anyway, choosing an open source model is defensible as a business practice, as ESR is fond of pointing out. And besides, while in theory I suppose some stockholder could try to sue Red Hat for not dumping the Open Source model, I don't think that suit would win.
If anyone wants to plow through a lot of legal stuff on the subject, try this article.
Yes, JFK should have said "Ich bin Berliner" (with no ein) to identify himself as a resident of Berlin in spirit. Instead he did the equivalent of calling himself a hamburger instead of a resident of Hamburg.
Re:egcs replaces gcc and egcs renamed to GCC
on
GCC 2.95 Released
·
· Score: 2
We tried to ask you, but since you posted as Anonymous Coward we couldn't find you. Since we lacked your enormous wisdom, we, in our lesser wisdom, called it GCC.
We considered the name "gcs". We decided to keep "gcc" because that's the name most people know; had we chosen any name but "gcc" some clueless folks would have kept running gcc-2.8.1 forever. Besides, we'd break every makefile in the world if we changed the name users type.
Don't get hung up on capitals versus lower case. Remember, when you invoke the command "gcc", it will happily build C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, or Chill for you. So gcc is the GNU Compiler Collection.
The need for pgcc should be eliminated by the new IA32 back end (which isn't in 2.95, but will be in the next major release).
I don't believe that there is any copyright assignment issue for the pgcc patches. The real issue was that Intel didn't do things "right". Their way of modifying the compiler was to ignore the distinction between the front end (portable) and the back end (processor specific), so pgcc is an Intel-only compiler as a result. This means that the Intel patches would need to be redesigned. Some of them already have been and are already in.
As a member of the gcc/egcs steering committee, I would be very happy if, in fact, GCC were "the finest compiler on the face of the earth". It isn't. It is the most widely ported compiler, and it's decent enough, but many other compilers beat it for code quality.
gcc 2.95 still isn't that great on Intel-compatible processors. The good news is that we finally have a new IA32 back end, produced by Cygnus under contract, that has been donated; we'll finally have enough accuracy to do instruction selection and scheduling properly. It will be in gcc 2.96 (or whatever we call it). Until then, pgcc will be better (I believe that the new back end beats pgcc at least most of the time).
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, folks. I badly want Wine to work. It doesn't. It isn't even close to working. Yes, I know that 90% or so of the API has been implemented, sort of, but the remainder will take years at the current pace.
MainWin, on the other hand, works. It has problems, but lots of companies are shipping software that runs on top of MainWin.
Unless one of the two is Dutch. Those folks are amazing (my old German teacher says "the Dutch have mouths shaped for languages). Many Dutch people speak four or more languages. I was at a workshop in Italy once, watching this Dutch woman I know carrying on conversions in English, German, Dutch, and Italian all at once, switching languages as she talked to each person at the table. And she doesn't think of herself as an outstanding linguist, that kind of language ability is considered typical.
The closest thing to a Nobel in computer science is the Turing Award, given by the ACM.
For mathematics, the closest equivalent is the Fields medal.
You shouldn't be surprised to hear ESR's writings compared to Marxism by scholars. He's analyzing the world in a similar way as Marx did: he's looking at groups of people and what their economic interests are, and he assumes that economic interests (in a general sense) are primary, and he's looking at the dynamics of the relationships between these groups or classes.
The difference between Marxists, capitalist-libertarians, and Randroids isn't in the way they analyze the world; they only disagree about which class of people should triumph.
Look at "Atlas Shrugged". It's very close in structure to many socialist realist fantasies: the class that does all the work rebels against oppression by the shiftless rulers. Rand just split the population in a different way, moving all the common folk into the "shiftless ruler" camp and having the technologists rebel.
In fact, the writings of a lot of pro-capitalist folk these days is just inverse Marxism: like Marx, they assume that human beings are fundamentally economic creatures and act out of economic motives, and that the ideas people hold are closely linked to their class interests. The only difference is about who should win.
Oh, come on. The paper is a better refutation of Noosphere than it is of CatB. Eric says Open Source is like the Potlatch (a gift economy). The paper shows that it is more like the scientific community, that this is a much better model.
You write: I don't think one can dismiss ESR's ideas merely because they will never become reality ....
Excuse me: in his series of papers (CatB, the Noosphere paper, etc), ESR was claiming that he was describing reality. That's what the paper was discussing! Does Open Source actually work the way ESR says it does?
The paper makes a good case that Open Source works a lot more like academic science than like the Potlatch. It would be nice if the paper were better organized, true.
You say you sensed a political agenda. I'm shocked.. ESR's writings are, of course, highly political. If you refuse to look at the political meaning of anything, the consequence is that others will find it easier to rule you.
You object to the fact that the paper discusses the relationship of Open Source to socialism and communism. How could such a paper avoid this? After all, if it's going to respond to the critics, it has to take this on (or haven't you noticed how many people have called us a bunch of commies).
Your reading comprehension is also poor, since you attribute a meaning to the paper that does not exist. The paper does not contain the major premise of your syllogism (Open source is like communism), in fact, it refutes it.
You don't seem to understand the point of the reference to Lysenkoism. He's basically talking about political correctness: certain things cannot be criticized. You erroneously think that he's taking about the particular scientific beliefs Lysenko had. Rather, he's talking about the fact that scientists with the wrong beliefs were run out of science, just like many slashdotters who point out that Linux is not perfect are also attacked.
Matt, your reasoning and your reading comprehension are sloppy. First, you mistakenly assume that the paper is discussing CatB and ESR and nothing else. The author is seeking to describe the entire movement, not just ESR, and quotes dozens of people. You seem to think that it is a premise of the paper that ESR is a fundamentalist, and that if he is a pragmatist, the entire paper falls.
The paper refutes many points that ESR has made quite effectively, but it is a refutation of specific writings by ESR, not of ESR as a person. So ESR's beliefs that don't appear in the papers don't matter that much (after all, surely ESR has changed his opinion on some matters since he wrote CatB).
Then, you admit that you haven't read the article! (This is fairly obvious).
But that isn't nearly as lame as the fact that at least three moderators wasted their bonus points on you.
Eric, when will you start acknowledging Bruce Perens' considerable ongoing contributions to the cause? Your continued sniping at him only makes you look bad.
We all need second-guessers, because none of us is perfect. Bruce's second-guessing of you resulted in a better license from Apple (you would have let them get away with too much, not because you're a bad guy but simply because you made a mistake).
As far as I'm concerned, you and Bruce have pretty much the same job: companies are contacting both of you for advice on software licensing; journalists are contacting both of you to get an understanding of the movement, both of you are advocates for open source, etc. You each have your strengths and weaknesses. This isn't Highlander; it is not true that "there can be only one".
The Unix companies all thought that their main competition was each other, so they messed things up and did their best to break source-compatibility between the different Unix flavors. Meanwhile people were tossing out their Unix systems and putting in NT.
It would be a disaster for Linux if the vendors start thinking of each other as the primary competition -- because it means they will be motivated to break compatibility.
SuSE is certainly competing with Red Hat, but each company can do far better by taking away users from Microsoft than either can by trying to take users away from each other.
You say "Alan should have gotten the complete list". Clearly you have no respect for Alan's time. He's a busy person. The moderation system lets the slashdot regulars vote on the best questions and reduces the amount of stuff Alan needs to respond to.
The BSD license permits someone to add new code to existing BSD code, and then to add a new license, as long as the original notice is kept. If you think that it is wrong for someone to use this permission, it follows that you think BSD licensing is wrong.
BSDers don't care at all if the license on the derivative work says "All rights reserved", no copying or distribution, pay thousands of dollars, go to jail if you break it. But they scream, scream, scream if the new license says "GPL". Why is this?
Please note: I don't want to change your sacred license. I got my degree at Berkeley, and I produced vast amounts of free software with a license just like what BSD is now (we never had the advertising clause). But if someone made a derivative work of my code and put the GPL on it, I wouldn't object in any way.
This remark makes no sense whatsoever. The BSD license already permits extensions to be totally proprietary. Why do BSD advocates care if someone makes an extension or fork off the BSD tree and GPLs it, when they don't object to someone who makes a fork off the tree that is totally proprietary?
It's really strange. BSDers politely request people to give their changes back, but if they choose not to (e.g. put the code into Solaris or some such) they don't object. But they scream if someone takes the same code and puts it into a GPL program. This is stupid. Even if BSD people can't use the code directly, they can study it for ideas, which is something that they can't do with proprietary extensions. (And yes, BSD snobs, BSD kernel developers have learned a considerable amount from work that first appeared in the Linux space, and of course considerable knowledge has flowed the other way as well).
If someone takes a BSD distribution and slaps the GPL on it, the original BSD distribution is still available. Note that RMS does not advocate doing things like this; while he prefers copyleft, he thinks that cooperation with the maintainers of non-copylefted free software and avoiding forks is more important. But if someone else does it, it really doesn't matter.
UCB has only removed demands for credit to the University of California. Other people who have added code to BSD have inserted demands for credit to them, and for such code, the advertising clause is still in effect.
For code that only demands credit to Berkeley, the conflict is gone and it can now be freely linked to GPL code.
Yes, companies can legally snoop all they want on their employees. They can also demand that everyone piss in a bottle once per day while the company doctor watches, sing the company song, etc. But only people with no talent or valuable skills should go along with such policies. In case you haven't noticed, we are currently in a sellers' market for technical talent.
If you are a sysadmin at a company that demands that you snoop through peoples' mail, and you feel that this violates your ethics, don't go along, and, if necessary, leave. Explain to your employer that, while you agree that it is legal, you feel that it is unethical and you will not participate.
The only reasons companies can force you to put up with this crap is because too many employees don't have any backbone. The reason for respecting employees' privacy is because it is the right thing to do. Exceptions should be made for people who aren't getting the job done.
Your article on evolt spreads outdated information -- because Unisys changed their minds since the "Unisys Clarifies Policy" article you reference was published. Unisys has revoked their freeware exception and has been actively going after freeware authors. You did notice that it isn't on the Unisys web site, didn't you? They flushed the original page down the Orwellian memory hole.
Unfortunately, the word of most corporations is worthless if it is not in a legally binding contract.
The LPF and their website is pretty much dead.
If you give an organization your email address, and they use it to spam you, this is a bad thing, but it is not a privacy violation (unless they sell the address to someone else).
So it's bogus to say that TrustE is not a good privacy policy because it doesn't prevent people from "one bite per customer" spamming. Instead, ask for something like TrustE as a minimum.
The following is a letter I just sent to the nice folks at Amazon.
Hey people:
(I was considering the salutation "Ladies and Gentlemen", but ladies and gentlemen don't behave as you have.)
Don't you guys know that even as I type this, paranoid companies all over Silicon Valley (and believe me, we are all paranoid) are installing blocks to prevent their employees from connecting to Amazon?
As for your "top 7 questions" you list on your "Purchase Circles" web page, are you really claiming that these are questions that real people are asking you? I'm sure that the real "top 7 questions" you are getting are:
My wife and I have frequently bought books from Amazon. We will not buy another book until two things happen:
I have also recommended that out network support staff cut off our company from Amazon. People can buy books from home if they really want to.
I'm in my company's office in Germany at the moment, but nevertheless I'll use US law here, since it's the only stuff I'm familiar with.
The US 4th amendment reads:
The only ambiguous term in the above is what is "reasonable", so the courts determine that. But generally speaking they decide whether a person would have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a given situation. And no, I don't think it's reasonable for some cop to go scanning houses at random to see what he can see; I at least hope that judges would agree.
It seems to me that if a cop has a search warrant or arrest warrant, that it would be fine to use this technology to execute the warrant. But without a warrant, no dice. It's an unreasonable search.
Sigh. If anyone points out that an organization that, in real life, would be filled with non-whites is being portrayed as all-white, people who are comfortable with pretending that these all-white artificial worlds are natural start screaming about the PC police. So the American TV is full of shows set in an all-white New York or an all-white LA, when in real life, whites are a minority in both cities. Makes you kind of wonder whether all of the other folks were carted away. Similar, Vancouver has a very large Asian population, mainly Chinese.
Note that I'm not advocating artificial diversity (like those mixed-race gangs you see on TV sometimes -- any given gang is likely to be all people of the same race). But I think it would be hard to find a techically oriented company of any size on the west coast of the US or Canada that doesn't have anyone of Chinese or Indian ancestry.
So in this sense, what's being pointed out is a kind of error in the presentation of the strip. UF could show Linux boxes crashing every day, and you would scream. The author could reply that it is possible for Linux boxes to crash, but you'd be correct to complain that that is very rare. I suppose he could then accuse you of being with the Linux PC police, but such an argument would be stupid.
Similarly, it is possible that in the whole history of an ISP, no non-white person ever works there or even visits the company. It's just that this is so wildly unlikely in the real world as to be peculiar.
Please note: I am not a lawyer.
If the action is really "utterly indefensible", then yes, there are grounds for a lawsuit: the stockholders with a 51% interest can't just decide to take all the money away from the folks with 49%, or run the company into the ground because there's a majority stockholder who's nuts. But according to some scholars (see below), such suits are almost impossible to win unless conflict of interest or improper motivation can be shown.
Anyway, choosing an open source model is defensible as a business practice, as ESR is fond of pointing out. And besides, while in theory I suppose some stockholder could try to sue Red Hat for not dumping the Open Source model, I don't think that suit would win.
If anyone wants to plow through a lot of legal stuff on the subject, try this article.
Yes, JFK should have said "Ich bin Berliner" (with no ein) to identify himself as a resident of Berlin in spirit. Instead he did the equivalent of calling himself a hamburger instead of a resident of Hamburg.
We tried to ask you, but since you posted as Anonymous Coward we couldn't find you. Since we lacked your enormous wisdom, we, in our lesser wisdom, called it GCC.
We considered the name "gcs". We decided to keep "gcc" because that's the name most people know; had we chosen any name but "gcc" some clueless folks would have kept running gcc-2.8.1 forever. Besides, we'd break every makefile in the world if we changed the name users type.
Don't get hung up on capitals versus lower case. Remember, when you invoke the command "gcc", it will happily build C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, or Chill for you. So gcc is the GNU Compiler Collection.
The need for pgcc should be eliminated by the new IA32 back end (which isn't in 2.95, but will be in the next major release).
I don't believe that there is any copyright assignment issue for the pgcc patches. The real issue was that Intel didn't do things "right". Their way of modifying the compiler was to ignore the distinction between the front end (portable) and the back end (processor specific), so pgcc is an Intel-only compiler as a result. This means that the Intel patches would need to be redesigned. Some of them already have been and are already in.
As a member of the gcc/egcs steering committee, I would be very happy if, in fact, GCC were "the finest compiler on the face of the earth". It isn't. It is the most widely ported compiler, and it's decent enough, but many other compilers beat it for code quality.
gcc 2.95 still isn't that great on Intel-compatible processors. The good news is that we finally have a new IA32 back end, produced by Cygnus under contract, that has been donated; we'll finally have enough accuracy to do instruction selection and scheduling properly. It will be in gcc 2.96 (or whatever we call it). Until then, pgcc will be better (I believe that the new back end beats pgcc at least most of the time).