Re: [9fans] ports from GPL

[Brantley Coile <brantley@coraid.com>]

Wouldn't at least gcc be from the MIT culture given its originator was
from the mit ai lab?  Where's readline and info from originally?
Not to mention emacs.

Where did the --option syntax originate?  Maybe they wanted to say /option
but that's not possible under Unix.  Wouldn't the -o vs --very-long-option-name
count as a MH vs. MIT artifact?

These are real questions.  I would like to know.


> oh ya. i think the gnu culture was seperate from the start.
> i started out by necessity. they needed to get their software
> to run on all kinds of unix varients, which were highly incompatable.
> and for a while it was pretty good stuff.
>
> (for example, the infamus mt xinu tools were suffering from bit
> rot when gnu tools started to become usable. for example,
> xinu grep had a really short line limit. gnu grep didn't (thanks mike.)
> the xinu shell was the original bourne shell, and would exit if you
> hit ^C at the wrong time and had signal-related memory
> issues because of its infamous memory management.)
>
> however gnu has devolved. they seem to value compiling on anything,
> and efficiency, but they don't seem to value simplicity. gcc is a good
> example of how getting as far out-of-balance as gnu seems to be
> can undermine one's primary goals.
>
> - erik
>
> On Fri Mar 17 05:35:36 CST 2006, brantley@coraid.com wrote:
>> > i think that open source code has a very different outlook
>> > on the world than plan 9. it's very hard (and frustrating) to
>> > deal with the culture clash when porting.
>>
>> That brings to mind something that I've been thinking about for a
>> couple of years.  In watching the stuff in Linux and poking around the
>> simulators and old code, I can see at least three different cultures.
>> Murry Hill (Bell Labs), 545 Technology Sq (MIT), and Berkeley.  These
>> cultures have belief systems that are mutually exclusive.  And there
>> must be subcultures as well.  The socket interface, for example, is
>> really MIT culture thru BBN to BSD.
>>
>> Anyone else see this?  More cultures?
>>
>>