On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 11:44:34AM -0500, Dennis wrote:
>>Then again, I may decide not to do it: My latest port submission has been
>>sitting in the GNATS database for months, so why bother submitting more
>>when nobody cares anyway?
>
>Welcome to the Animal Farm!!!! THIS was my point about the FreeBSD camp
>particularly alienating binary vendors as to drive them away. The kernel
>make has been broken for years....the "fix it yourself" aka "tough sh*t"
>echo has been heard loud and clear.
>
>They dont want your stinking binary contributions. Get used to it.
Actually, the port submission I was talking about is in source code form.
And it is nothing new: Ports always seem to take a long time to be committed.
Nor do I mean it as criticism. FreeBSD is a voluntary effort, so it takes
time. I just find it kind of weird that whenever I write software for
FreeBSD, the Linux community finds it within seconds of the time I release
it. They send me email thanking me for my work, they send suggestions, and
things like that. Meanwhile, the users of the OS I wrote it for will
probably never even know it exists.
Most of the email I get from FreeBSD users is critical: They accuse me of
using Windows assembly language. I do not know where they get that idea.
I use NASM, which has nothing to do with Windows. Windows uses MASM which
is totally incompatible with NASM. NASM uses the Intel syntax, excatly as
defined by the people who created the '86 series of microprocessors.
NASM is written in C, comes with full source code, free, available from
the ports, and uncontaminated by GNU license. I thought we were supposed
to use tools that are NOT licensed under GNU whenever possible. Well, NASM
does not use GNU license (in fact, it was dropped from Sourceforge for
that very reason).
MASM, on the other hand, uses a syntax that is derived from Intel's syntax,
but, as everything that comes from Microsoft, has been modified just enough
as to be incompatible.
NASM is not MASM. It is a portable cross-assembler that can assemble
source code on any platform for any supported platform (which includes
all flavors of Unix on the '86 hardware).
Ironically, the biggest Microsoft haters -- the Linux community -- are
the biggest proponents of NASM. My motivation, however, has nothing to
do with hatred. I use it because it offers tighter control over its
output than any other assembler available anywhere, and because it was
designed as an assembler for assembly language programmers, not as a
back end to compilers. If I were to write a compiler for another language,
I would let it emit AT&T syntax because gas is better suited for
the assembly of compiler-produced assembly language code.
In the 35 years I have been programming, I have learned to use the
tool that is best suited for the task at hand, not a tool that is
politically correct.
I am sorry to see a certain rigidity in this community, an attitude of
"we have always been doing things a certain way and we are not about
to change." If I had that attitude, I would still be programming in
Fortran, inputting my code on punch cards. I thought it was us old
farts that were supposed to be inflexible, hehehe.
Nor am I saying, by the way, that everyone should switch to the tools
I use. But I certainly don't appreciate it when people, especially people
much younger than me, keep telling me to use a "tradition" that was not
even born when I was already programming computers. If we keep insisting
on traditions, we will end up in a museum.
Luckily, not everyone here is like that. There are many in this
community who are not anal retentive, though many just talk to me
in private and not dare to express their ideas in a public forum.
That said, I do think FreeBSD is the best darn OS currently in
existence. That is why I am still sticking with it, and will continue
to support it.
As for the binary thing: That was a question, not a statement.
Cheers,
Adam
--
A billion dollars in the bank,
without the experience of carefreeness and charity,
is a state of poverty.
-- Deepak Chopra
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