Re: The GNU thing
On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > I think this statement is absolute truth. Linux wouldn't exist without
> > GCC, but it certainly could without textutils or shellutils and suchlike.
> interesting opinion. Maybe you never tried to "dpkg --purge --force-depends
> --force-essential" those packages.
So you're saying that the FSF is the only possible source of things like
ls, rm, mv, etc? And here I thought that the BSD folks had written their
own. Gosh, the responsibility of being the only folks on the face of the
earth who are CAPABLE of producing a "make" or a "sed" must be absolutely
awesome! Where do I go to bow down to their feet?
My point is not that nobody uses those systems, but that anyone with even
marginal skill can write those programs. GCC is harder to replace.
> But then, some sort of textutils you need. In this regard, I find Linus'
> comment utterly bullshit and closed-minded. OTOH, I would not hesitate to
> call Linux insignificant, compared with the GNU projects.
Reminds me of the joke:
Q: What's the difference between Linux and GNU?
A: Linux has a kernel that boots.
While that isn't strictly true any more, it was true for a long time. It
is still true, if you aren't willing to run beta code. If the FSF is
full of such SH programmers, why couldn't they cobble together something
in a couple of months? I did it years ago.
(The answer, of course, is that they don't know how to write the essential
stuff first and let the rest just happen. That's how Linus got so far
ahead without a dedicated following or taxpayer support.)
One more thing: You talk about missing perl because it depends upon cat.
If you are unable to write a "cat" (it's about 20 lines of C, fer
crissake!) or an ls or an rm then you don't deserve an opinion about whose
work in necessary and whose isn't.
--
Jonathan Guthrie (jguthrie@brokersys.com)
Brokersys +281-895-8101 http://www.brokersys.com/
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