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Re: GCC 4.1: Buildable on GHz machines only?
Joe Buck wrote:
On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 03:13:21PM -0700, Stan Shebs wrote:
No, there have been plenty of complaints, but the GCC mailing
lists have, shall we say, a "reputation", and a great many
users will not post to them, either for fear of being ridiculed,
or in the expection that they will not be heard. (Everything is
archived, and they can see what happens to others.)
Oh, come on, Stan. Compared to what? The GCC lists are quite civil
compared to many free software developer lists. I'd say criticism
of proposals is harsher on the Linux kernel list (though most of that
criticism is fair). And if you *really* want to see a hostile
environment, try debian-devel.
Note that I said "fear of", which may very well be unwarranted,
and "ridiculed" is not quite the word I wanted. Sometimes the
critiquing of a user's message is factually accurate, but piled
on, where GCCers point out all the faults in the poster's message,
presumably on the offchance that one of those is relevant. But
even though this may be the logical thing to do, the effect can
be withering; more than a few times an angry user has bent my
ear on how they felt belittled in the process. (My response
was of course to make soothing sounds and sell them a Cygnus
support contract. :-) )
Mind you, I'm not saying this is a wrong way to answer. I was
just reacting to the fallacy that the lack of complaints
means that everybody is happy; it can also mean that the
unhappy people are not willing to speak up for some reason.
(And I note that all of the hostile posts in this thread
are now permanently archived and soon to be Google-indexed,
for the future convenience of people considering whether they
want to run that gauntlet themselves.)
Stan