[H-GEN] GCC/G++ MANUAL

[Martin Pool]

On Tue, Aug 11, 1998 at 11:08:06PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:

> For a start, most of the developers seem to be old hackers, anyway, and
> those who aren't tend to get... encouraged to implement their dreams in
> a way that doesn't lose the neat things that the old hackers liked in
> the first place.

This is probably one of the most important things: very gently and
respectfully helping new users realize that it's not just free beer.

Imagine how many people currently working on the revolution would
otherwise have been hacking away on DOS programs on pirated copies of
Turbo Pascal or VC++, or just spreading warez.  It's a really good
thing there's an alternative for us: bill ought to be grateful that
open source is reducing the incidence of evil software piracy.

> Things that don't really make a difference on that score -- like making
> dpkg go as fast as rpm does, are more or less left on the backburner.
> While it might be nicer if it were fixed, and it makes a difference if
> you're impatient, or doing your first install, or not getting paid by
> the hour or whatever -- it doesn't make admining the system fundamentally
> easier: so work on things that *do* first.

As they say at

  http://www.gnu.org/prep/tasks_1.html

tools for non-programmers are currently in short supply whereas tools
for programmers are plentiful and excellent; new tools are (ceteris
paribus) better than new features for old tools; and new features are
more noticeable to new users than improved performance.  However, you
can do what you like.

> Which is why things like "dselect" and "apt" are integral parts of the
> system, rather than things like "redneck".

I hate to think how many users debian has lost through the unfriendly
dselect interface.  (And yes, I realize it's a known problem and am
sure apt will be much better.)  The RedHat `install' interface sucks,
too, but it's bad for experienced people whereas dselect is bad for
new users.

> > Remains to be seen but they are in the same market and have to compete
> > or do they have to compete?
> 
> The only reason to compete is if losing is unacceptable -- you don't win
> you don't get paid, you don't buy food, you starve, say.
> 
> With free software, if Debian doesn't "win", then Red Hat does and you
> use that instead. Big deal. You've got the source. You'll have to forget
> how Debian did things, and work out how Red Hat does instead, but, well,
> big deal.

Indeed, the bodily fluids (ObRobK) of GNU/HURD are probably purer than
those of GNU/Linux: but Linux seems to have taken off faster, and
people can use and work on whichever one they prefer.

-- 
Martin Pool