Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development [LWN.net]

Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development

Posted Nov 19, 2003 21:00 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957)
In reply to: Thomas Bushnell removed from Hurd development by vblum
Parent article: Thomas Bushnell is no longer Hurd maintainer

> 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...

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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.