* FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc.
@ 1995-02-01 12:42 David Weller
1995-02-02 0:21 ` Michael Hirasuna
` (2 more replies)
0 siblings, 3 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: David Weller @ 1995-02-01 12:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
This has probably been mentioned before, but if not...
In this month's GNU's Bulletin, an atricle indicated the League of
Programming Freedom (LPF) has dropped its boycott of Apple. The Free
Software Foundation (FSF), which was backing the LPF, has also
announced it will no longer boycott Apple. This means "the FSF will
now treat Apple operating systems like other non-free operating
systems."
This is, of course, welcome news by all. For the Ada community, however,
it speaks volumes.
--
Frustrated with C, C++, Pascal, Fortran? Ada95 _might_ be for you!
For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc.
1995-02-01 12:42 FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc David Weller
@ 1995-02-02 0:21 ` Michael Hirasuna
1995-02-02 1:45 ` Richard Kenner
[not found] ` <3gr7ql$39u@rational.rational.com>
1995-02-06 4:46 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
[not found] ` <3grq8l$jja@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>
2 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Michael Hirasuna @ 1995-02-02 0:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <3gnviq$epn@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>, dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM
(David Weller) wrote:
> This has probably been mentioned before, but if not...
>
> In this month's GNU's Bulletin, an atricle indicated the League of
> Programming Freedom (LPF) has dropped its boycott of Apple. The Free
> Software Foundation (FSF), which was backing the LPF, has also
> announced it will no longer boycott Apple. This means "the FSF will
> now treat Apple operating systems like other non-free operating
> systems."
I didn't know, this is wonderful news, thanks for the posting.
What caused this change of heart? How can I get a copy of the bulletin?
I guess the next milestone is when an FSF version of gcc becomes available
for the Mac.
--
Michael Hirasuna | hirasuna@acm.org
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc.
1995-02-02 0:21 ` Michael Hirasuna
@ 1995-02-02 1:45 ` Richard Kenner
[not found] ` <hirasuna-0402950942330001@hirasuna.clark.net>
[not found] ` <3gr7ql$39u@rational.rational.com>
1 sibling, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread
From: Richard Kenner @ 1995-02-02 1:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <hirasuna-0102951921230001@hirasuna.clark.net> hirasuna@acm.org (Michael Hirasuna) writes:
>I guess the next milestone is when an FSF version of gcc becomes available
>for the Mac.
I think you mean when the FSF GCC distribution supports the Mac. This
will happen as soon as somebody sends me the necessary files.
The FSF itself does not do ports to other than GNU, but essentially
serves as a clearinghouse for the work of those who have done such
ports.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <3gr7ql$39u@rational.rational.com>]
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc.
[not found] ` <3gr7ql$39u@rational.rational.com>
@ 1995-02-07 10:32 ` Richard Kenner
0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Richard Kenner @ 1995-02-07 10:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <3gr7ql$39u@rational.rational.com> rlk@rational.com (Bob Kitzberger) writes:
>Am I the only one that finds it ironic that a group calling itself
>the League of Programming Freedom has prevented gcc from being ported
>to the Mac?
You misrepresent the record here. The FSF cannot prevent GCC from
being ported to any machine, since it is under the GPL and it did not
prevent such a port from being performed.
However, the FSF did not assist in such port, either before or
after the fact, though there was certainly such a port.
The reason for this is that if Apple had been successful in their
legal action, people would no longer have the freedom to write
programs such as GCC.
It would have been hypocritical of the FSF to support a company
whose aims were to prevent the FSF and other similar groups from
producing free software.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc.
1995-02-01 12:42 FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc David Weller
1995-02-02 0:21 ` Michael Hirasuna
@ 1995-02-06 4:46 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-07 3:03 ` Robert Dewar
[not found] ` <3grq8l$jja@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>
2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread
From: Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software @ 1995-02-06 4:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <3gnviq$epn@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>, dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller) writes:
> This has probably been mentioned before, but if not...
>
> In this month's GNU's Bulletin, an atricle indicated the League of
> Programming Freedom (LPF) has dropped its boycott of Apple. The Free
> Software Foundation (FSF), which was backing the LPF, has also
> announced it will no longer boycott Apple. This means "the FSF will
> now treat Apple operating systems like other non-free operating
> systems."
>
> This is, of course, welcome news by all. For the Ada community, however,
> it speaks volumes.
I am not sure what volumes it speaks. Could someone elaborate ?
Does this mean that GNAT authors would just make a version of their compiler?
Does this mean they would define packages for the (many) Macintosh toolboxes?
Does it mean they would reach a cooperative agreement with Apple for periodic
release of the latest Apple toolbox definitions as is done for the commercial
third parties who produce C, Pascal and Fortran compilers?
(Not that proper Ada bindings are as easy as those others, which are done
somewhat automatically.)
I work with computers for a living (rather than use computers to work
with Physics for a living or some such), and it has probably been 25 years
since I wrote a program which did not have to be tightly connected with
the operating system. As far as commercial products are concerned, it
is not feasible to achieve the "look and feel" expected by customers on
(Macintosh, Windows, VMS, Unix) machines without using a lot of operating
system specific calls.
And presuming I tempt a GNAT expert into responding, would GNAT likely
output both 68000 and PowerPC code, or would it require a Macro assembler,
which relegates it to what some view as the inferior MPW environment?
Larry Kilgallen
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc.
1995-02-06 4:46 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
@ 1995-02-07 3:03 ` Robert Dewar
1995-02-07 14:06 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
0 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread
From: Robert Dewar @ 1995-02-07 3:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
Larry asks all sorts of questions about what GNAT would look like on a MAC.
Larry, why not do the port yourself, the ncessary code generators are there!
Then you can answer these questions to your own satisfaction :-)
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc
1995-02-07 3:03 ` Robert Dewar
@ 1995-02-07 14:06 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-07 22:07 ` Richard Kenner
` (2 more replies)
0 siblings, 3 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software @ 1995-02-07 14:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <3h6nud$gdb@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Larry asks all sorts of questions about what GNAT would look like on a MAC.
> Larry, why not do the port yourself, the ncessary code generators are there!
1) Lack of technical competence
2) I have to work for a living
> Then you can answer these questions to your own satisfaction :-)
Groucho Marx said "I would never join a club which allowed ME as a member."
Extend that to remarks about eating ones own cooking. :-)
********
But seriously, I am curious when you say the necessary code generators
are there. If GNAT is not presently on Macintosh, how is there a code
generator for 68K (or PowerPC, for that matter, since MacOS seems to be
the only consumer of those chips so far).
If it is not obvious, I have only used commercial compilers.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc
1995-02-07 14:06 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
@ 1995-02-07 22:07 ` Richard Kenner
1995-02-08 15:56 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-09 1:51 ` Robert Dewar
1995-02-08 17:47 ` FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate fo Brian Hanson
[not found] ` <3h8qve$e02@cmcl2.nyu.edu>
2 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Richard Kenner @ 1995-02-07 22:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <1995Feb7.090613.9062@eisner> kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software) writes:
>But seriously, I am curious when you say the necessary code generators
>are there.
Because they are. Irrespective of WHY they were developed, the
question of whether or not they exist is not one open to debate. Go
look at a GCC distribution.
>If GNAT is not presently on Macintosh, how is there a code
>generator for 68K (or PowerPC, for that matter, since MacOS seems to be
>the only consumer of those chips so far).
The 68K was the CPU used in the Sun3, which was for quite a while the
major (indeed essentially only) workstation used in Universities and
many other places.
The PowerPC port was done since it is very similar to the POWER
architecture used by the RS/6000, which GCC has supported since its
inception.
Motorola and IBM have expressed interest in the PowerPC GCC port.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc
1995-02-07 22:07 ` Richard Kenner
@ 1995-02-08 15:56 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-09 1:51 ` Robert Dewar
1 sibling, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software @ 1995-02-08 15:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <3h8qve$e02@cmcl2.NYU.EDU>, kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) writes:
> > But seriously, I am curious when you say the necessary code generators
> > are there.
>
> Because they are. Irrespective of WHY they were developed, the
> question of whether or not they exist is not one open to debate. Go
> look at a GCC distribution.
Well not all of us have that available, or a wideband connection to the
Internet, but I do thank you for going on to explain how the two code
generators arrived. Understanding the origins is sometimes as important
as understanding the facts.
> Motorola and IBM have expressed interest in the PowerPC GCC port.
Even in non-commercial endeavors, I would feel hard-pressed to compete
with Motorola and IBM :-).
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc
1995-02-07 22:07 ` Richard Kenner
1995-02-08 15:56 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
@ 1995-02-09 1:51 ` Robert Dewar
1 sibling, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Robert Dewar @ 1995-02-09 1:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
The 68000 has been and still is VERY widely used outside Apple. It is an
important player in the embedded market, and a significant use of GCC for
the 68K is for such embedded products. Thinking that the 68K is Apple
only is very misleading. Other machines that use the 68K are the Amiga
(for which there is a GNAT port being worked on), and the Atari.
As for the power PC, it is just the way things worked out that Apple came
out with the first PPC machines, but IBM is of course expected to be a major
player in PPC based machines.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate fo
1995-02-07 14:06 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-07 22:07 ` Richard Kenner
@ 1995-02-08 17:47 ` Brian Hanson
1995-02-09 3:01 ` Richard Kenner
[not found] ` <3h8qve$e02@cmcl2.nyu.edu>
2 siblings, 1 reply; 18+ messages in thread
From: Brian Hanson @ 1995-02-08 17:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article 9062@eisner, kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software) writes:
>
>But seriously, I am curious when you say the necessary code generators
>are there. If GNAT is not presently on Macintosh, how is there a code
>generator for 68K (or PowerPC, for that matter, since MacOS seems to be
>the only consumer of those chips so far).
The sun 3 platform used the 68020 chip. gcc has been running on that for a long
time. There is also an rs6000 version of gcc/gnat. The rs6000 uses the power
chip set which is fairly close to the power pc instruction set.
Brian
brh@cray.com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate fo
1995-02-08 17:47 ` FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate fo Brian Hanson
@ 1995-02-09 3:01 ` Richard Kenner
0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Richard Kenner @ 1995-02-09 3:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <1995Feb8.114712.3756@driftwood.cray.com> brh@cray.com writes:
>There is also an rs6000 version of gcc/gnat. The rs6000 uses the power
>chip set which is fairly close to the power pc instruction set.
Though this is off-topic, I think I should say something about this
families of architectures, since there is a lot of confusion out there
(not necessarily in this thread).
The POWER architecture first appeared a number of years ago in the IBM
product known as the RS/6000. The processor itself didn't have a
public name, but most people referered to it by its last IBM code name
(RIOS).
The PowerPC architecture is neither a superset nor a subset of POWER.
However, the instructions present in both is a very large subset of
both; i.e., the differences between the two are a relatively small
number of instructions. One other difference is that the mnemonics
used in the documentation of both architectures differ, even for the
instructions in both; GCC has a option that says which mnemonics to
use which is orthogonal (except in its default) to what architecture
you're compiling for.
The PowerPC architecture is a 64-bit architecture with defined
subsets. All announced implementations omit the 64-bit instructions
and some omit a few of floating-point instructions (that are not in
the POWER architecture). You also view it as having optional
supersets consisting of those instructions.
What is popularly known as the "PowerPC" chip is more properly known
by its Motorola part number, MPC601. This is *not* a pure PowerPC
processor. In fact, it implements the *union* of the POWER
architecture and the smallest defined subset of PowerPC (less the
64-bit and the extra FP instructions). GCC knows this and when
compiling for the 601 (the default when you say "powerpc") it will use
either POWER or PowerPC instructions, depending on which are more
efficient for a particular expression. The MPC603 and MPC604 do not
implement the POWER-only instructions.
To make life even *more* interesting, IBM recently announced products
based on the POWER2 architecture. This architecture is a superset of
the POWER architecture. Some, but not all, of these added
instructions are also in the optional part of the PowerPC
architecture. GCC also supports POWER2.
This is probably much more than most people want to know on this
topic, but I thought I should straighten out the confusion.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <3h8qve$e02@cmcl2.nyu.edu>]
* Re: FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc
[not found] ` <3h8qve$e02@cmcl2.nyu.edu>
@ 1995-02-09 21:52 ` Bradley Ross
0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Bradley Ross @ 1995-02-09 21:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
In article <3h8qve$e02@cmcl2.nyu.edu>,
Richard Kenner <kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote:
>The 68K was the CPU used in the Sun3, which was for quite a while the
>major (indeed essentially only) workstation used in Universities and
>many other places.
>
The 68K CPU was used in a number of different workstations in addition
to the Sun 3 workstation. I believe it was also used on the Apollo
workstations in the past and is currently used on the Commodore Amiga.
Both GCC and GNAT have been ported to the Commodore Amiga, although
the reference for the GNAT port stated that the version they used
required an immense amount of memory to compile itself. Is the new
version more efficient in this regard?
>The PowerPC port was done since it is very similar to the POWER
>architecture used by the RS/6000, which GCC has supported since its
>inception.
>
>Motorola and IBM have expressed interest in the PowerPC GCC port.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <3grq8l$jja@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>]
end of thread, other threads:[~1995-02-11 13:55 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
1995-02-01 12:42 FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc David Weller
1995-02-02 0:21 ` Michael Hirasuna
1995-02-02 1:45 ` Richard Kenner
[not found] ` <hirasuna-0402950942330001@hirasuna.clark.net>
1995-02-07 11:11 ` Richard Kenner
[not found] ` <3gr7ql$39u@rational.rational.com>
1995-02-07 10:32 ` Richard Kenner
1995-02-06 4:46 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-07 3:03 ` Robert Dewar
1995-02-07 14:06 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-07 22:07 ` Richard Kenner
1995-02-08 15:56 ` Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software
1995-02-09 1:51 ` Robert Dewar
1995-02-08 17:47 ` FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate fo Brian Hanson
1995-02-09 3:01 ` Richard Kenner
[not found] ` <3h8qve$e02@cmcl2.nyu.edu>
1995-02-09 21:52 ` FSF drops Apple boycott, opens gate for GNAT, etc Bradley Ross
[not found] ` <3grq8l$jja@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>
[not found] ` <3h06rv$4pg@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
[not found] ` <3h3hiv$e49@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>
1995-02-06 18:26 ` Stan Shebs
1995-02-07 20:05 ` Robert Dewar
1995-02-09 17:16 ` Mats Weber
1995-02-11 13:55 ` Robert Dewar
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox