[NTLUG:Discuss] Evil 2.96 continued...

[Rick Cook]

On Wednesday 13 June 2001 10:34, Will Senn wrote:
> Chris and Steve went into considerable detail concerning
> the evil 2.96...
> (snip)
> considerable detail
> (snip)
>
> Thanks guys for a concise and lucid description of the
> situation.  I agree that the move as you have described
> it is not a particularly wise one if stability and
> interoperability are prominent goals.  I don't know if
> it is wise from a business perspective - time will tell.
>

One aspect of the "evil" that is 2.96 that did not get touched on is that Red 
Hat bought Cygnus a year or so ago. 

Why is this part of the evil? 

Glad you asked. 

Cygnus was effectively the only company that provided commercial support for 
gcc. They were providing that "service" to the computing industry long before 
Linux was an issue. Cygnus gave Sun/HP/SGI/Dec/... users the option of a 
commercially supported compilation system that did not cost as much or more 
than the machine they were running it on. In my opinion, the Cygnus 
connection means that the "gcc 2.96" decision was made as a very informed 
decision. They knew that the FSF developers did not consider 2.96 release 
worthy (because they are part of the development team) a chose to do it 
anyway.


Rick
-- 
rcook at ntlug.org
rcook at hex.net