From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) In-Reply-To: <47A50832.7000801@gmail.com> References: <0e742be69697735012d14c6319071fa1@terzarima.net> <5d375e920802020941k6f662ab1s3ac9a41d6d95bb66@mail.gmail.com> <20080202182756.GA862@shodan.homeunix.net> <47A50832.7000801@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <610ED9FF-33E2-4B37-8AAE-3D0CEBD9C1CA@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: dave.l@mac.com Subject: Re: [9fans] A newbie question... Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 15:01:01 +0000 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 42038360-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 3 Feb 2008, at 00:17, Robert William Fuller wrote: > An alternative interpretation is that the facts are skewed by the > Bell Labs reality distortion field. The syllogism goes something > like this: > > All things not made at Bell Labs are bad > GNU is not made at Bell Labs > Therefore, GNU is bad Hello children. Today's word is "ad hominem". Can you say "ad hominem"? "We are the knights who say 'NIH'". Not. Nobody's mentioned the antecedents of autoconf&co. other than genealogically. The criticism has been (IMO) well-reasoned. If the appraisals appear somewhat vituperative at times, that is probably because the writers thereof constitute some of the sorry band of unfortunates (myself included) who have been persuaded by circumstance to engage in bootless battle with the autoconf hydra. We eagerly await ingenious and novel counter-arguments explicating the intrinsic intellectual beauty and universal utility of a so-called portability system consisting of 10K+SLOCs of convoluted, inscrutable and non-portable configuration scripts intertwined with a twisty maze of twisted #ifdefs. DaveL