Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development [LWN.net]

Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development

Posted Nov 19, 2003 18:44 UTC (Wed) by vblum (subscriber, #1151)
In reply to: Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development by havoc
Parent article: Thomas Bushnell is no longer Hurd maintainer

This is the strength and the bane of the FSF: It has no visible (to me, at least) element of community or democracy in its decisions - ultimately, RMS seems to decide.

So, it is a vehicle that can be used most efficiently to achieve a single-minded purpose, not distracted of blurred by any other influence. By taking a clear-cut, no-compromise stance on many issues, the FSF has achieved a lot in the past. Very useful indeed.

However, in cases like the present, the FSF can turn into a machine that wreaks destruction (although maybe minor in the big picture) among its core of supporters (it appears). Not so excellent.

I sure am glad that the FSF is in charge of fundamentalist ideology, but Linus is in charge of making the one thing (Linux kernel) that must actually work. Ultimately, no element of democracy there either, but at least that benevolent dictator puts pragmatism first (which is why Linux works today, whereas Hurd, at this juncture, is problematic).

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Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development

Posted Nov 19, 2003 21:00 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

> Linus is in charge of making the one thing (Linux kernel) that must actually work.

Yes, because /bin/sh, /bin/ls, /usr/bin/gcc, and so on, don't need to actually work...

ls, sh and friends

Posted Nov 19, 2003 21:37 UTC (Wed) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

I know. But if your hardware is not supported by the kernel, you are out. As much as I never "use" the kernel, I do appreciate (very much) the level of out-of-the-box support that Linux now offers. And that is supposed to read Linux. I am also really grateful for Gnu et al. I'd be stuck without them. But I could run ls on Windows (Cygwin) if I wanted to.

Anything that I have ever read about Hurd seems to me
(1) great stuff, if it ever works (whether "better" than Linux or not I don't care, but having another fully independent free alternative would be great)
(2) ideological management - top-down design both in terms of architecture, and target.

(2) is a problem. It's Linux's great strength that there is no outright ideological overhead - feels much more welcoming.

Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development

Posted Nov 20, 2003 22:36 UTC (Thu) by argent (guest, #17054) [Link]

"Yes, because /bin/sh, /bin/ls, /usr/bin/gcc, and so on, don't need to actually work..."

If you're running a Linux system, you must have a dozen alternatives for /bin/sh, more /bin/ls variants than you can shake a stick at, and the only reason you can't find an alternative to GCC is because GCC is a leveraged monopoly... the alternatives like TenDRA can't compete because there's such a high API barrier to entry for any compiler that isn't compatible with GCC's "embraced and extended" version of C.

Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development

Posted Nov 22, 2003 11:36 UTC (Sat) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

the alternatives like TenDRA can't compete because there's such a high API barrier to entry for any compiler that isn't compatible with GCC's "embraced and extended" version of C.

Then why doesn't *BSD use it? It's not the extensions to C that make GCC far and away the most used Free C compiler. It's also ported to many more systems then TenDRA is and is heavily tested with real world C code instead of just for ANSI C correctness.

It's a big deal to make a C compiler, and there's no reason not to use GCC unless your output system is tiny or very odd or if your hosting system is tiny.