Mail Archives: djgpp/2000/08/25/08:31:36
>The last statistics I heard was that Cygnus got the contracts for
>about 75% of all new microprocessors. Granted, there aren't that many
>microprocessor vendors, but the same compiler ends up in Linux, and
>the GNU tools themselves have been very popular over the last 10-20
>years or so. You can buy Red Hat (and others) Linux and Cygnus GNUPro
>in the local mall - I'm not sure how much more "mass" the market would
>need to be to qualify.
I'm not going to argue with that. But to me, mass market means wide spread,
popular and well known. During the early 90's, Watcom was the compiler that
just about everyone (who was a programmer) know about. I knew about Watcom all
the way back in '92 or so, since we used it on the QNX machines in high school.
I didn't know about GNU and the FSF until I got Linux in 1997, and DJGPP until
about 1998 (when I bought the first Dr. Dobbs alternative languages CD). The
other GNU software I learned about after finding out about DJGPP (the CD
distribution was lacking some bits). Of course, that's just my timeline of
when I learned about the respective products.
>I'm sorry you feel that way, but I'm sticking to my statement. I
>*still* have to remind our *own* marketing people (Cygnus) about the
>difference between commercial and proprietary. I've long since
>learned not to bother if it's someone else's company. I've also
>learned that people who don't understand the difference usually don't
>care about the difference, so trying to teach them is a wasted effort.
I should retract my comment. In hindsight, I was being rather childish, since
I am well aware that the non-developers of Watcom don't seem to be very bright
people. This is just the sort of mistake I should have expected of them. Mr.
Delorie, I'm sorry.
>Of course, my main point was to avoid a long thread about Watcom on a
>forum where Watcom is off-topic.
Fair enough. I will not continue the thread after this one.
>GNUPro isn't "mine". I'm just pointing out that you should take
>marketing statements with a great deal of cynicism, even when they're
>your own company. If you think it's childish to examine the facts and
>make an informed decision, oh well.
I knew that. That was just the "feeling" I got from your statement. On the
other hand, there've been discussions here before about the GNU's bloated code
size. (Eli mentioned something about doing it so as not to risk copyright
infringements).
But, this is off topic for the group, and I've probably made a bit of a fool of
myself. Hey, at least I apologized. :)
Andrew Jones
- Raw text -