Messages in this thread | | | From | (david parsons) | Subject | Re: GNU/Linux | Date | 5 Apr 1999 12:12:21 -0700 |
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In article <linux.kernel.Pine.LNX.3.96.990405132706.716C-100000@calypso.view.net.au>, Michael Talbot-Wilson <mtw@calypso.view.net.au> wrote: >On Sun, 4 Apr 1999, Ernst Jan Plugge wrote:
>> Had gcc not been available, another compiler would probably have been >> used. If that compiler was non-free, how long do you think it would have >> taken until a (semi-)free alternative appeared? The availability of gcc > >You are asking how long it would have been before another Linus Torvalds >appeared and took advantage of the particular circumstances that might >have existed at a another particular point in time, if gcc and the GNU >utilities had not existed at the point it time that was important to the >beginning Linux.
You're assuming that before the GNU C compiler there was nothing but a howling void. This was NOT the case; on the contrary, the wide availability of GCC has salted the fields that used to produce free C compilers.
If RMS had been run down by a streetcar in 1983, GCC wouldn't exist, but one of the other free C compilers would now dominate the C compiler marketplace.
____ david parsons \bi/ Remember Sozobon C? \/
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