Date: 04 Jan 2003 14:00:33 -0800 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, Cliff Sarginson <cls@raggedclown.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD's use of GCC (Was: Bystander shot by a spam filter.) Message-ID: <20lm20poce.m20@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20030104112345.02a48b70@localhost> References: <200212312041.gBVKfr183480@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org> <3E120659.3D60EB30@mindspring.com> <20030101140530.GA11468@raggedclown.net> <4.3.2.7.2.20030104112345.02a48b70@localhost>
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Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> writes: ... > other compilers just aren't obtainable... and also because so > much of the third party software for OpenBSD is dependent > upon GCC as well. A vicious cycle that needs breaking. Let's hope it doesn't NEED breaking, because it WON'T be. Enough people have either bought into the copyleft mind-set or at least agreed to publish that way, that we have no reasonable choice but to accept the fact that much of the software we use will be copylefted. I think the best policy for the more generous, less anti-closed-source, developers and those who support them, is to create their own, well- identified niche of the free OS world, with well-known participants (eg, pdksh, *BSD kernels, XFree86, etc.) and accept the fact that other software will be more restrictive (including some closed-source things like NVidia drivers, Oracle, Word Perfect, etc.). Then try to attract converts to help dig out the walls of the niche. I'd much rather see a good almost-free GUI library than a better open source compiler. Very few of us care that compilers are open source at all, as long as they are sufficiently cheap, because many fewer people are able to develop good compilers than good GUI libraries, etc. > Also true. It's amazing how often one hears RMS described as > a master coder, when in fact the original GCC was awful. I remember reading that he was very prolific and nothing about him turning out good code -- just code that worked. That qualifies as "master coder" in MY mind. -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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