@petit it's GCC's fault for making non-standard extensions available in the first place. This extends to GNU as a whole, it's a really shit habit they have and the entire computer science ecosystem suffers under the heel of their garbage
@petit GNU is perhaps the single largest threat to software quality in our entire ecosystem
Beware @sroracle, you are going to be blocked by @sir for this
kind of "nonsense". 😉
Yesterday I spent 30 minutes trying to help him understand that his hate for #GCC is misdirected (and undeserved) see https://qoto.org/web/statuses/102380322656831790 and now I'm blocked.
But you know, hating a "third-order" dependency like #GNU that made your whole #business possible but you have no real impact upon is a great #marketing tool.
#OSS people love to throw shit at GNU and #FSF as they are unlikely to fight back.
But often if you dwell deeper, they don't know what they are talking about.
That's the main difference between #FreeSoftware #hackers and #OpenSource developers.
@awilfox @sroracle @sir @AdelieLinux
I think that #GNU #GCC has (and had) it's issues (just like any other software, or well... human artefact), but it's for sure a valuable piece of software.
It's true that the large number of optimizations available, the large number of operating systems and architectures supported, the various language frontends make it a very complex piece of software.
Also it's a venerable program collection, with more than 30 years of active development and research on its shoulders, with all it implies.
Finally, I think everybody remember the (dumb and short-sighted) #Stallman opposition to exposing its AST in 2015 (see https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-01/msg00171.html )
Yet I agree that GCC is still probably the best compilers COLLECTION we have (I'd argue that Ken Thompson compiler suite for Plan 9 was simpler and more portable, but it's not a compilers' suite and it's not even a standard C compiler).
@awilfox @sroracle @sir @AdelieLinux
All this said I wonder what we disagree upon... 😆
About the difference between #FreeSoftware and #OpenSource?
I think I should write something about this as with time my understanding of the issue deepened.
But here you can find the incident that opened my eyes on the matter: https://medium.com/@giacomo_59737/what-i-wish-i-knew-before-contributing-to-open-source-dd63acd20696