GNU Hurd

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2002 at 09:36:17AM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >From jeroen at dekkers.cx Sun Mar 17 03:37:33 2002
> >The fact is that the Hurd isn't death. The opposite is the fact: the
> 
> I did say that nobody was interested in cdrecord for HURD

Which is totally untrue. I know at least one person who is interested:
Marcus Brinkmann. I'm sure there are more people interested in
cdrecord for the Hurd. They only didn't told you or me about it.

> and that if there were people who do real work with HURD those
> people would have interest in cdrecord.
 
I do real work on the Hurd. I have exactly NONE interest in cdrecord,
I don't even have a burner!

> >Hurd has more developers today than it ever had in its existence. The
> >conclusion that the Hurd is death is based on your arrogant assumption
> >that cdrecord is one of the most important programs.
> 
> Again, you are arogant and you obviously never did look at freshmeat.

Indeed, I never look at that website because I don't like it.

> cdrecord has been #1 of interest for a long time and still is at
> rank #3 (but could be at #2 if there were not so many bugs in Linux).

So based on freshmeat somebody would first install linux, then MPLayer
and then cdrecord? And after that they are going to install glibc,
gcc, etc? Or is it just because they can't find the homepage of
cdrecord and they use cdrecord to find it and the other homepages are
easier to find?

Now let's base our facts on one of the biggest distribution of
software, Debian, instead of mouse clicks of some users. In Debian
cdrecord is priority extra, which is the lowest priority. Nobody seems
to complain about that although Debian has a lot of users.

If we look at the popularity contents at
http://people.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/index.html and specifically
http://people.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/results/results.otherosfs,
we see that only 262 of 1829 individual have cdrecord installed and
use it frequently. That's only 14% of the users, not that important.

It's nice that many people who are interested in cdrecord looks up the
homepage using freshmeat, but it doesn't say anything about how many
people use it. Most of the computers don't even have the hardware to
make cdrecord an useful program!

> >Cdrecord one of the free programs with the highest interest? That's a
> >joke.
> 
> This is rewality, look at freshmeat....

Not everybody who uses free software uses freshmeat. To give you an
example of the bogus stats of freshmeat: cdrecord has a popularity of
42.75% and gzip one of 4.11%. I'm sure there are more people who use
gzip on a day than they use cdrecord.
 
> >> Name a non-trivial program that has
> >> been ported because there was a demand for it.
> 
> >There are dozens. Read the debian-hurd mailinglist archive and look in
> >the debian bug tracking system if you want to know them. I can only
> >guess what you mean with "non-trivial program" so I can't really name
> >good examples.
> 
> So you cannot give an example?

I can give enough examples, there are 3000 packages in the
archive. Browse that if you want to know them. 

What do you call a non-trivial program? I can give some packages
ported anyhow: XFree86, ssh, emacs, vim, ruby, python, TeX, ... 

> >Just two simple statements so you can even understand that cdrecord
> >isn't the most important program on earth.
> 
> You are kidding again. How about giving statements that could help in a 
> discussion?

You still didn't answer my question. Why should I use cdrecord on if I
want to do real work? I can do real work without cdrecord. I've done
real work for years without cdrecord. 86% of the individuals doing
Debian's popularity contents can do real work without cdrecord.

> >Your conclusions are based on wrong assumptions. You are just
> >spreading FUD by saying that the Hurd is death. I'll keep telling the
> >true story if people are telling lies on this mailinglist.
> 
> If you like HURD not to be dead, then work on it and make it of interest for 
> potential users. This is really simple isn't it?

WTF do you think I'm doing? I'm working on it. I make it of interest
for potential users. But you are doing to the opposite and try to make
the Hurd look bad with spreading your lies. Stop doing that please.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 232 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20020317/10fd7f82/attachment.sig>