Re: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias)

Martin Wilck wrote:
> 
> Am Don, 2002-06-13 um 10.27 schrieb Roger Fujii:
> 
> > Exactly.  If you want a real world example of this, look at gcc on linux vs
> > java.  Gcc is pretty much the only game in town.  You are stuck with its
> > profilers, debuggers and code generation.
> That's not true. There are commercial compilers out there, as well as
> debuggers and profilers. Unfortunately for those companies, they don't
> seem to produce so  much higher quality than the GNU team that many
> people consider the enormous prices worth paying.

Care to name any?   Only one that comes to mind is the Intel C compiler and that's
a special case.

> It is certainly out of the question for home user, and from my experience
> in the past I can tell that it is very tough for e.g. research institutes, too.

well, since the amount of $ a company will make is:  cost - (# customers) * (price),
it's pretty hard when price -> 0.

> Look at Fortran: although it is a widely used language among scientists
> who usually don't have large funds to spend on software, there is no
> functional free software Fortran 90/95 compiler. There are some
> commercial compilers, but not more than for C. They are all horrendously
> expensive. Their debugging tools clearly fall short of gdb, unless you
> are willing to spend another $10000 on a debugger. Some of the compilers
> are plain buggy, their command line options are a nightmare. Obviously
> the GNU project and the GPL have nothing to do with this situation. When
> G95 is finished, these products will crumble. In the meantime, many
> people will rather port their code to C or C++ and use gcc than pay for
> mediocre products.

Fortran isn't necessarily a good example, given that I don't think even IBM
has accepted F95 (I know they vetoed F90).   Is there active work on F?? on
gcc?  (I know g77 didn't have any active interest a little bit ago).
 
> > java, on the other hand, even
> > though it's free (as in beer), has a wealth of diversity (forte, jbuilder,
> > not to mention the small vendors) in development tools (and jvms, profilers,
> > compilers, etc).  Any honest person cannot dismiss that GPL has a hand in
> > this situation as the GPL denies any party from carving out a nitch to attempt
> > to make a living.
> 
> The vast amount of Java implementations is a consequence of the Java
> hype that came at the same time with the Internet and e-business hype -
> Java gold rush.

I'm talking NOW.  These companies are still around in this economic climate.
I don't think many of these products are venture funded anyway.

> When Java becomes as venerable as C is now, it is likely that much of
> this diversity will have vanished, and that a free software tool will be
> the standard just as gcc is now for C (if Java lives that long at all).

gcc *never* had as much diversity.  I'm sure there will be some maturation
of the market, but there will be less of a functional need void (functionality
that needs improvement and is not being worked on) as such a void will be
filled by entrepreneurs (assuming there's sufficient demand).
 
> > The real reason is that
> > as CPUs get more complicated, the compilers are also more complicated to make
> > and there aren't a huge number of people qualified to work on it.  And, given
> > the lack of financial incentive on working on it, it's easy to show why the gcc
> > is where it is today.
> 
> Have you stepped forward and offered the gcc team your assistance?

I am not going to put forth the effort required to become qualified to work on it.  I
have
looked at the code before, and the operations of the compiler is non-trival (side
effects
of macros, proper sequencing of setups...).  Besides, I don't *want* to work on a
compiler.

> Are you aware that a lot of Big Players have contributed code to gcc in
> order to quickly have a reliable compiler for their new hardware?

Only one I know that fits this description is IA64.  Besides, I don't see how
this affects my statement.  Once you have the compiler working, there is little
commercial incentive in improving it.  What non-x86 processor do you see a huge
amount of work optimization work on for the gcc?

> AFAIK the source code availability for gcc is of crucial importance for
> CPU developers. This may of course not hold for Sun, because they have
> their own compilers.

You can make the source code available without using GPL.  All major UNIX(TM) vendors
have their own compilers that I know of (IBM has xlC, Sun has forte, Dec haD whatever
their alpha compiler was called, and so does HP).   Does this change anything?

-r