glibc and the Linux libc fork

Oleg Verych olecom at flower.upol.cz
Tue Jun 19 14:30:30 UTC 2007


On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 02:24:13PM +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> 
> Having read about the libc5 fork of glibc in Rick Moen's "Fear of Forking"
> essay, I went looking for more info about this fork since it seems to have
> healed so well that no one ever talks about it anymore.  It also seems
> strangely underdocumented for a 10 year old event in a community that values
> putting everything about everything online.
> 
> http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/history_of_glibc_and_linux_libc

As you write "just before my time". My opinion is, that because of that
your problem is.

> If anyone knows any other sources of info that I didn't reference, I'd be
> happy to hear about them.

Let me express it (a wild guess) and save your time for more useful
things.

What Linux was in 1994/1998? I bet you have no idea. But some major
points can be derived by deduction. Just a few of them follow.

It wasn't about standard compliance -- to have more paper work, than
coding and having ever growing hardware actually running that kernel.

It wasn't about have kernel today enterprise tomorrow -- money and
attention of big (any?) companies.

It wasn't cathedral after all (you know what to read about that).

To have any kind of libc as accessible userspace was a need, GNU
project failed to provide. After all FSF lost to Open Source.
You must, as i've wrote in my first mail here, build monument to Linus
Torvalds. Because of that tiny-crucial part of the operating system --
WORKING kernel.

Yes, now it's easy to talk about POSIX, 64 bits and others things in
glibc back in that time. But this have no connection to Linux kernel
at all. Do you know why?

Because Cygnus have their business, learn what exact business. And as
a very wild guess i can speculate, that glibc by Cygnus was developed
using Solaris as f*cking *working* kernel. Feel free to check technical
writings on <http://people.redhat.com/drepper/>.

If Linux by Linus Torvalds and friends after all reached maturity
level, when Solaris can be abandoned, again make something useful --
build monument to him!


I'm back coding.
--
-o--=O`C  info emacs : FAQ
 #oo'L O  info make  : not found
<___=E M  man gcc    : not found



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