Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!ukma!uflorida!unf7!shite
From: shite@unf7.UUCP (Stephen Hite)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Don't use MPW GCC if you respect RMS's wishes
Message-ID: <333@unf7.UUCP>
Date: 9 Dec 90 08:03:48 GMT
Organization: Univ. of N. Florida, Jacksonville
Lines: 41


   Yes, I  ftp'ed MPW GCC from apple.com (funny, I checked today and it's
gone) and yes, I have the 3.1 MPW C bundle as well as MPW C++.  Apple
development tools are fine products. However, I've decided to shelve MPW
GCC out of respect for RMS's wishes.  It's the very least I can do because
I don't *need* it to be productive on the Mac.  

   I decided not to support RMS by getting rid of my SE/30, though.  This is 
too radical an idea (for me) and won't change anyone's mind about anything.  
It's just going to deprive me of a development and learning tool.  This
type of thought reminds me of people who burn books or throw albums away
because someone had them convinced that it would change things.  I know,
RMS doesn't advocate destruction, but I *luv* my Mac and my 386 clone running
Unix and that transcends politics or anyone elses ideals. ;-).

   I can understand a programmer porting GCC to the Mac with the good 
intention of wanting to create a free standalone development tool 
(i.e. free headers, libs, etc).   However, it makes no sense for Apple 
developers to do it and include a "readme" that discourages Apple developers 
to use it on their own projects.  They (Apple) include another "readme" 
that freely admits that GCC is a "better" C compiler than  MPW C.  About 
the only thing MPW C "won" was the compilation speed test.  Are you guys 
*happy* with your jobs at Apple, if you get my drift.  It should be no 
surprise to anyone that yours is faster and GCC is more robust 
(hint: RMS didn't get his recent "genious grant" for his politics or hairstyle)
:-) :-)
 
  The Apple developers involved with the GCC port have proven that they
are great systems programmers / integrators.  Unfortunately, they have
also demonstrated that they do not realize the implications (internal
and external) of what they do.  That is, internally, if higher level 
management learns that its own employees are distributing a file that
recommends to others to boycott Apple (i.e. gcc-info file) then someone's
butt is going to get chewed.  Externally, as put so succinctly by
Brian Johnson of the University of Maryland, "It's like beating Ghandi
with his own stick because you can".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Hite                       Today's Cheer is:
shite@sinkhole.unf.edu           "Copy to the Left...Copy to the Right..."
                                 "LNF...LNF...FIGHT, FIGHT FIGHT!"  -me