On Sat, Aug 05, 2000 at 07:25:41PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > =head1 TITLE
>
> > Use features of portable, free compilers and libraries
>
> [...]
>
> > =head1 ABSTRACT
>
> > There is no sane reason why *nix vendors continue to push proprietary
> > compilers and system libraries on their customers when better, free
> > replacements could be had for little effort. Eventually, they will
> > realize this and start porting GNU Libc and Binutils, contributing
> > whatever unique features their current tools have to the GNU versions,
> > and shipping these packages with their systems. Perl should take
> > aggressive advantage of these programs' features in anticipation of
> > eventually not having to support all the other cruft that's out there.
>
> It's completely unrealistic to believe that everyone is eventually going
> to use GNU libc and binutils. It's also completely false that the GNU
Absolutely. People who tout GNU as an end-all fail to see much
further than the cozy Unix world. It's unrealistic to believe that
e.g. gcc/g++ will be available in each and every platform people will
run and want to run perl on. Saying that "oh well, then, we will just
wait until gcc is ported" is absurd. Saying that "oh well, then, we
will help in porting gcc" is doubly absurd. Saying that "oh well,
then, we will start porting gcc" is triply absurd. Same goes for
libraries and tools. Perl is about taking over the world with Perl,
not taking over the world with GPL. We will use whatever is available
instead of waiting for GNU.
(Yes, thank you, I am fully aware of GNU tools being available for
non-UNIX platforms, gcc being used for cross-compiling, glibc and glib
being available etc.)
> libraries and tools are better than the vendor counterparts; Sun's
> compilers and linkers are considerably better than GNU's for SPARC C code,
> for example.
Likewise for Digital/Compaq. gcc's Alpha code generation and optimization
is really inferior.
> In short, while some of the ideas in this RFC have merit, I am absolutely
> 100% opposed to the grand implications and its tone and would consider
> this approach to be disasterous for Perl.
100% agreed.
(I think this discussion should be in licencing?)
--
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
# There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
# It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
