From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200603171521.k2HFLisx051862@ducky.net>
From: 9fans@ducky.net (Mike Haertel)
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] ports from GPL
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 07:21:44 -0800
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 15c57350-ead1-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

>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.

Emacs and Info clearly originated on MIT's "ITS" operating system,
and were originally written by Richard Stallman, as was today's
widely used GNU Emacs.  GCC had its roots in a "portable optimizer"
paper written by someone at Arizona (I think), but GCC itself was
coded in a heavily Lisp-influenced style, again by Richard Stallman.

The --option syntax is also due (as far as I know) to Stallman and
resulted from a search for ways to add long-named options to existing
Unix programs without breaking POSIX 1003.2 compatibility.  Stallman
originally tried to use +option, but found that was directly
incompatible with POSIX, which pretty much says that anything not
beginning with - is a regular argument.  POSIX had inherited the
old System V getopt() convention that "--" ends the list of options,
and never specifically said what "--stuff" means, so Stallman stole
it for long-named options.