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Re: IBM Linux/390 patches


> Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 22:00:19 +0000 (GMT)
> In-Reply-To: <9912230144.AA35080@marc.watson.ibm.com> from "David Edelsohn" at Dec 22, 99 08:44:06 pm
> From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>

First, one disclaimer I don't know of any of the details, other than
what has been said here....

[ ...let me pull an rms... ]

> That suggests incompetence in the GCC steering committee.

No.

I don't know why everyone is jumping up and down.

People can work on whatever ports they want, and inform others of that
work or not at their discretion, further, they can submit (donate) the
work back to the FSF.

While it would be nice if everyone submitted things in a timely
manner, and gave advance notice so that others don't duplicate work,
this isn't required.  Just because people don't do this, doesn't mean
they should earn insults.  Also, just insult the steering committee
here?  I think you have a much enlarged view of what they do, and I
don't think their scope reaches as far so as to warrant an insult.

> Richard Henderson knew about the work being done by Linas last May
> when it was discussed a bit during Linux Expo. Linas has a right to
> be pissed off if nobody in the gcc/egcs echelons didnt think to tell
> both teams about each other

Talk about indirect.  First, neither party is obligated to inform the
other party about their existence.  So, in fact, there is no blame,
regardless of who knew what and when.  Now, if the people involved
want to be _good_ net citizens, the policy would be to inform the list
_themselves_ of their intended area of work, to read the lists, to
notice each other, and to work together to complete the work and
minimize any duplication of effort.  This is nice, and preferred, but
we don't require this, nor should a party that fails to do this suffer
insults.  Each is donating their hard earned time to contribute to the
state of the art in high performance cross platform industry standard
compilation systems.  That warrants praise and respect, their own time
is theirs to waste as they see fit.  They will be held accountable to
themselves, not us.

If someone wants to ensure their work isn't a complete waste, they
should work with the maintainers, get the work into the tree as soon
and as often as possible.  This way, cvs serves to inform others that
might be working in the same area, that someone else is already
working in that area.  If they fail to do this, and their work winds
up wasted because of duplication, then it was their choice (to not
submit), and it is their pain (waste of time if they then choose the
official version of the code).  If we do anything, it should be to
laugh, and sinker at them, privately, and learn from their mistakes
(if we are to so value them).

I have witnessed and seen evidence of this effect many times.  Has
happened in the past, and will happen in the future.  Some
duplications are tiny, and some are large.

(And all that from a person that loves a good flame war.)


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