Re: Any other freely available compilers?

In article <debdhq$82r$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Rich Townsend <rhdt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> However, I *have* noticed that open source software is not all equal.
> Some people will kick up a hell of a fuss about getting support for
> Linux; yet at the same time have no qualms in using the standard Perl
> distribution, which is 'unsupported' IIRC.

Well, yes. Quite possibly a case of simple prejudice based on particular
names. The name "Linux" seems at times to get special treatment based on
nothing other than the name.

I've seen similar prejudices about matters Fortran. For example, there
was a project here that had a manager who refused to accept Fortran 90
code. There wasn't actually any standard on what would be accepted....
other than that it couldn't be named f90. I swear that if I had said
that I was using a C autocoder with a runtime support library, all would
have been fine... as long as I didn't let it slip out that the name of
this "autocoder" involved f90. NAG's f90 could validly be described that
way. The project did use other 3rd-party C autocoders with similar
requirements for proprietary run-time support libraries.

Of course, some of the same folk also had problems understanding terms
like "proprietary", which they liked to use as a buzz-word, without
actually understanding its meaning. I was amused when an argument was
advanced that we should avoid using an open data format developed here
and instead use a closed commercial data format. While there might or
might not have been some actual merit to the change, the main argument
put forth for the change was to avoid using proprietary formats. No, you
didn't get it backwards - we should get rid of our open, non-proprietary
format and move to a proprietary one because proprietary formats were a
bad idea. :-) The proposers clearly had picked up on "proprietary" as a
good buzz-word to use, but forgot to check what it actually meant.

--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: my first.last at org.domain | experience comes from bad judgment.
org: nasa, domain: gov | -- Mark Twain
.

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