Frank Hofmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > In former times, all software did follow Open Source ethics and was made
> > cleanly portable to all important platforms.
>
> Read on ...
>
> >
> > I really hope that the free availability of Solaris and Sun Studio will
> > change things back to a state we did have in the early 1990s where software
> > usually did work out of the box on SunOS.
>
> That's the difference - not so much that people in the late 80s and early
> 90s were writing more portable software.
>
> The main freeware/opensource target platform at that time was SunOS4 and
> software naturally worked there. Trying to compile the same on HP/UX 8.x
> didn't usually succeed out of the box, nor (often enough) trying to
> compile the same thing on a Solaris 2 / SunOS 5 machine. Or, gasp, the
> then-still-infant early Linux versions.
...
> I don't think from "but it then ran fine on SunOS" one can conclude that
> the quality of code in the early 90s was that much better.
> There were less half-completed/abandoned/unmaintained opensource projects
> out there back then...
In that time, the people were at least more open to suggestions for changes that
could make the code more portable.
It must not be a problem for OpenSolaris in case that the developer stay
developing on Linux (although it is easier to get portable code when it is
developed on Solaris). The problem is that a lot of authors are no longer
interested in portable code besides their Linux home system.
This is a problem that was not present in former days. Well, Sun did forget
about desktop users and this was the result. I do not expect it to change
soon. There is however hope:
Paul Eggert, one of the old iron FSF hackers did of course work on SunOS
in the old days. He did completely convert to Linux and did not care about
GCCisms that made the code non-portable. Since Sun Studio is available
for free, he again sends patches against such bugs.
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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