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Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 01:33:19 -0700
From: "marty fouts" <mf.danger@gmail.com>
To: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
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References: <447801D9.3060901@FreeBSD.org>
	<13610.1148715854@critter.freebsd.dk>
Cc: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>, Mike Jakubik <mikej@rogers.com>,
	freebsd-current@freebsd.org, kmacy@fsmware.com,
	Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [RFC] Removal of Fortran from the base system
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On 5/27/06, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
>
> I suspect the only reason it is there in the first place was that
> it saved somebody at Berkeley the trouble of keeping track of another
> release/tape/etc.

If I remember correctly, (and it *was* twenty years ago, so I may
not,) f77 was included because the VAX was often seen as an
engineering machine and so it was easier to get people to accept BSD
over VMS if it had a compiler.

I know that we relied on f77 to keep our engineering guys from
demanding another vax to run their simulation codes on at Ames,
because I can recall swapping 4.2 out and VMS in on Amelia long enough
to benchmark their codes to show that f77 produced code that was fast
enough compared to DEC's fortran compiler

Besides, there was fortran compiler on the 6th edition tapes, how
could you leave it out of BSD? ;)