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[News] Matthew Dillon interviewANN.lu
Posted on 03-Jan-2002 13:58 GMT by Christophe Decanini58 comments
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Matthew Dillon was a famous Amiga developper that created the Dice C compiler. You can read the interview here.
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 51 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 05-Jan-2002 02:17 GMT
In reply to Comment 50 (victor #):
Reality check time.
Dillon is developing FreeBSD, and testing various builds on a regular basis. FreeBSD is not altogether lithe; a recent 4-STABLE snapshot is 304MB of C source. Basically, a large amount of BSD tinkering requires recompilation of the *entire system,* and what could take days on a 486 or '030-'040 now takes an hour on an Athlon, depending on available RAM and drive speed. (I think my recent 'make buildworld' took 2 hours, with X loaded and MP3s playing, and this was on an 850MHz 'Thunderbird' with 128MB of PC100 and some fairly crappy drives. I've knocked the FSB up to 133MHz since then, and I'll time things properly, next time I go about it.)
Now, whether it's "good" that you're sort of required to recompile everything often on BSD (now that hardware has caught up, it's not a hassle, and it does let you keep every system binary optimized for your particular CPU flavor), it's a matter of ideology. The BSDs are quite open-source pure, and just about everything for them comes in source form- the automated "ports" system makes compiling dead-easy, although it does require a fair chunk of disk space. Again, the hardware is cheap now, and running a BSD on an Athlon does make you feel like you've got your own little mainframe, especially if it's in a big fugly black case. (Black cases are to x86 what 'Tangerine' is to iMacs- the only faster color is 'Aluminum.' ;))
Of course, if you can settle on one BSD flavor, you can (cross)compile the system on your Athlon/similar, and dump the result to your slower machines; this is something of the point of all the NFS fixes- it helps if your network filesystem works!
Now, BSD is "never" going to be in quite the same vein as Amiga or anything else- at least until someone starts a MediaBSD project, and I gather Linux has more momentum on the realtime/low-latency front- so it's not exactly fair to compare things closely. I tend to configure my BSD boxes for stability and security, even if it means sacrificing performance. Windows doesn't quite allow the same tradeoffs (well, consider the apparent anything-DirectX-must-run-as-Administrator snafu in XP, if I've heard that one right?), and we won't know quite what the Amiga model will look like until the DE gets all its bits together and OS5 appears.
So yes, BSD requires some horsepower to develop and administer easily. The individual algorithms are tight, though (with the exception of any 'band-aids' ;)), and they're there for anyone to take under the BSD license. Microsoft uses BSD code, Apple's using entirely too much BSD code, and hopefully, Amiga and MorphOS are using BSD code where it makes sense. That's the BSD ideology- raising the baseline for all implementations- and that's what Dillon's doing for you, even if he doesn't use his 3000 much. :)
</rant> ... Now y'all can start a flamewar on which of the BSD or GPL philosophies is more 'communist;' it'll be more on-topic.
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 52 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by Dave on 05-Jan-2002 06:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 51 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
Great followup. I think most people forget that builds have gone from mere megabytes of source to nearly a gigabyte of source ( and in a couple of projects that are on at work multiple gigabytes of source ).
It used to take days to compile our builds on our compilation farm, then we dumped them all for a z/Series running virtual Linux/390 instances and its gone from 71 hours to 25 minutes. Mind you thats partly because of the bandwidth of XCF, the amazing Shark DASD and FICON....
Dave.
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 53 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by 3seas on 05-Jan-2002 14:02 GMT
In reply to Comment 51 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
"</rant> ... Now y'all can start a flamewar on which of the BSD or GPL philosophies is more 'communist;' it'll be more on-topic."
Neither are!
Communism - 1) a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state. 2) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activityis controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party. 3) the principles and practices of the Communist party. 4) communialism.
Communisim is a combination of a totalitarian governing body and a socialistic economic system.
Totalitarianism - 1) he practice and principles of a totalitarian regrime: the totalitiarism of Nazi Germany. 2) absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralized institution: Totalitarianism aims at suppressing initiative as well as individualism. 3) The character of quality of an autocratic or authoritarian individual, group, government, or state: the totalitiarism of the father in their patriachal household.
Socialism - 1) Theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of industry, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole. 2) Procedure or practice in accordance with this theory. 3)(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism.
there is also:
Commonwealth (much of the definition refers to non-communist states or collections of, such as the British Commonwealth of Nations, and the Commonwealth of Austrialian, to even the how it referes to use in US history.)
But then there is this in the definition: 7) any group of persons united by some common interest. 9) a state in which the supreme power is held by the people.
And then there is this which gives a very good overview of what Open Source Software is:
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif_document.asp?docnum=430
There are some business practices going on at Amiga corps that far better fits the definition of communism than what what OSS does.
It is also worth noting the standing question as to why some like yourself persist with such disortions of the truth.
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 54 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by Matt Parsons on 05-Jan-2002 23:18 GMT
Yes, Amiga Inc. are a little "foolish" IMHO (this statement is totaly personal and is not connected to any projects I may be involved with) when it comes to the AmigaOS Clones.
I don't think they see the advantages of the Clones... That said they have been neither surportive or negative about AROS etc etc etc... so I will say they are Evil (they are very nice people), just a little misguided :-)
With some support from them we could build a rather large Amiga community based around the Clones as official endorsed products... It's just one idea, and one of many :-))))))
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 55 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by Matt Parsons on 05-Jan-2002 23:20 GMT
DAMN!!! I meant to say thy are NOT Evil. Amiga Inc. ARE NOT EVIL. I Like them, I just feel they should change their stance on certain things.
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 56 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by Dave on 06-Jan-2002 06:59 GMT
In reply to Comment 55 (Matt Parsons):
With some good Amiga classic options and some decent developer tutorials ( Mastering Amiga Programming is very well written folks ) what Amiga Inc thinks could quickly become an irrelevance anyway. This is why I am keen to see x86 based options like Forever, 'athlon and XL succeed alongside PPC based options like AmigaONE and B-Plan.
So long as it is possible to build a cheap ish networked computer with great graphics and sound and we have talented developers like Hyperion and Apex writing entertainment software there will always be a place for Amigas in our house.
Its the middleware stuff Im concerned about, and am working on.
Dave.
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 57 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 06-Jan-2002 09:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 53 (3seas):
3seas pulled out the dictionary:
>Communism - 1) a theory or system of social organization based on the
>holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to
>the community as a whole or to the state. 2) a system of social
>organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled
>by a totalitarian state dominated by >a single and self-perpetuating
>political party. 3) the principles and >practices of the Communist party.
>4) communialism.
Okay, seriously, this was a facetious reference to a classic troll in the open-source community, so I hate to inform you that this therefore becomes a meta-troll. You can spend plenty of time discussing it civilly, but it's one of those debates that will never be settled, and is of dubious utility when it comes to actual development. ;) Personally, I'm annoyed that English doesn't have seperate words for the various systems lumped under 'communism' and 'socialism,' and when I'm feeling Marxist I'll argue that the call for destruction of the middle class and creation of an aristocracy was a matter of writing to the audience. (In theory, the aristocracy of the time wasn't supposed to have a vested interest in 'abusing' the working class; as the Manic Street Preachers said, "We are All Bourgeois Now," and thanks to eBay, everyone gets a chance to play in the exchange of property.)
Anyhow...
The organizing principles of both BSD and Linux (kernel) development can, in fact, be shoehorned under a number of the definitions of both 'communism' and 'socialism,' especially when you consider that groups like the BSD core or Linux kernel qabal could be said to play the role of the state, and might be considered totalitarian or aristocratic in nature.
FreeBSD has an election process; elections are open to committers (so it's something of an aristocracy/oligarchy), and I thiiink there was some confusion and controversy over that back in 2000, at which point I was still trying to learn "ls." :)
http://www.freebsd.org/internal/bylaws.html
The 'state' sets the license (BSD, GPL), and offers their work to all comers, citizens or not, willing to abide by the license. Call that state ownership of property if you want. Since this is the internet, anyone can start their own 'state' if they've got the skill and can't deal with core or similar groups. (Viz DeRaadt breaking off NetBSD and forming the People's Republic of OpenBSD. ;)) The benevolence of the open source states allow for this sort of thing. (Somewhat like the U.S.'s WIPO-adjusted patent laws, which let foreign states have a look at patents filed here, so the keiretsus can repatent the ideas in their nations of origin and avoid paying licensing to American inventors. That's not a dig at Japan, it's a dig at America's stupid politicians, and yes, there are other patent reforms we really *should* implement.)
Linux distribution development is a whole other can of worms, and is best described as license-limited anarchy. ;)
>There are some business practices going on at Amiga corps that far
>better fits the definition of communism than what what OSS does.
Hard to say, and it depends what perspective you take. You could consider a lot of corporations to be [communist|socialist] if you wanted, since their management controls their property and gives their citizens a share of the wealth as determined by the ruling managerial class. ;) See why this isn't really a useful argument, though it can be a lot of fun to talk about?
Amiga and some of the other projects do ask for certain contributions without direct compensation (beyond furthering of the platform/satisfaction of the creator), and they try to steer the community a bit. There hasn't been a lot of 'silencing' going on, and just your average amount of slander. The legal situation between Amiga and MorphOS isn't entiiirely clear yet, and if it does go to court, the facts of the case will surely be interesting. Nobody's complaining about AROS to my knowledge, which is good at least.
As to commonwealths, a commonwealth of nations is not unlike a corporation- and guess what all these companies are? :) Now, if someone wants to create some sort of 'democratic' business model, that gives all [developers|customers|people on the planet] voting rights, and compensates all contributors with a portion of the profits, that'd be interesting- it happens that that sort of thing is much easier with open source, because the profits are basically $0.
>And then there is this which gives a very good overview of what
>Open Source Software is:
>http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif_document.asp?docnum=430
That's a good overview; could you explain how it relates to any of the points I raised? The real point to my post was to explain why Dillon was not developing FreeBSD on an older 68030 machine that is not, in fact, a FreeBSD target. :) If anyone feels he should be doing something other than developing FreeBSD (say, focusing on NetBSD or OpenBSD, which do target Amiga?), feel free to say it; unfortunately, the quality of the argument until this point was akin to saying the CDTV would make a great platform for Unreal Tournament. (I'm picking a DirectX-loving game for a reason, here.) We're all dreamers, but the 'Reality check' is a reminder to be pragmatic- let's solve problems that *exist,* rather than trying to create new ones- are we supposed to hate BSD code because it keeps a certain developer off his Amiga? :)
>It is also worth noting the standing question as to why some like
>yourself persist with such disortions of the truth.
Which distortion of the truth? You had me up until this point.
If it's about my use of 'communism,' it wasn't serious and yet it's still defensible (as you can see above); if it regards my take on the BSD license and philosophy... maybe I can't speak for the total quality of the code, but as long as you're not using BIND... ;)
[Hint to developers everywhere: please, please, *please* do not make the mistake of making BIND an Amiga standard. http://cr.yp.to/djbdns.html provides a few compelling reasons, though djbdns isn't exactly an improvement.]
Now, if it really is about the time and performance required to build a BSD world, here are some benchmarks I had the bad luck to make today, after hitting a small bug in a November build of 4-STABLE that kept me from building Mozilla:
/*
System specs:
850MHz TBird @ 866MHz (unlocked to 133MHz DDR frontside bus)
EPoX 8KTA3 motherboard (Via KT133A chipset)
128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM @133MHz (Please don't ask me why this is stable!)
Adaptec 2940UW off of which hangs:
2 Seagate ST32272W drives (2.1gb, 7200RPM, no RAID/striping)
A Fujitsu SCSI-II magneto-optical drive dragging the bus down
to classic SCSI-II speeds.
Running 4-STABLE with SOFTUPDATES:
/usr/bin/time -h make buildworld
47m7.49s real 24m41.15s user 5m49.86s sys
In other words, it used about 30 minutes of CPU time, 6 of which were spent in the kernel; the other ~17 minutes were spent waiting for disk access (ugh) and sharing time with my IRC client and MP3 player, which was going most of the time.
With the system up to 4.5-PRERELEASE, with SOFTUPDATES and UFS_DIRHASH added, I managed to build Mozilla:
cd /usr/ports/www/mozilla ; /usr/bin/time -h make -j4 -DWITHOUT_CHATZILLA
56m3.34s real 38m59.96s user 5m33.23s sys
Marvel at how slow my disks are. Mozilla sources, once unpacked, did indeed take more space than the entire OS's sources, and for what it's worth, 0.9.7 feels generally worse (slower, bigger, seemingly buggier display code- though that might be my Matrox DRI driver) than 0.9.5. Hopefully, it'll be more stable.
*/
I'd actually love to see some gcc or NetBSD benchmarks (especially comparing Amiga to Mac68k); Google isn't turning much up, and the GCC guys are mainly concerned with benching GCC against prior versions of itself.
Okay, this isn't edited as well as it should be, as I'm not even sure what viewpoint I'm supposed to be reacting to- hopefully there's some useful information buried in it, somewhere.
Matthew Dillon interview : Comment 58 of 58ANN.lu
Posted by 3seas on 06-Jan-2002 14:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 57 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
The value of a postage stamp goes only as far as it's ability to stick.
The value of words and language only goes as far as their agreed upon definition and use.
The growing open source software base is just that, a growing open source softare base.
It doesn't care or even know about politics and economies, it doesn't need to. All it
needs to do is to continue to grow in use value.
The political economical bodies trying to put a cage on it is the only reason such babeling
even happens in the first place.
The fact is, this open source software movement has only just begun. Some may preceive it's
age (after full picture birth - GNU and Linux fundamentally complete system) to be something
like 10 years old this year.
This movement is not going to stop and at some point in the not to distant future, thru 20/20
hindsight it will be clear that it was the only way to get so far beyond where we are today,
in computer technology and use of, that many patents and other IP will have exposed themselves
as being very counter productive.
It's not about politics or economy, it's about getting things done, advancing the whole forward
faster than can be achieved in any other way. Figure it out for yourself! Bill Gates started in
1975, Linus in 1992. You might say Gates had a 17 year head start. And it's getting to be obivious
that in another 17 years Linux and open source software will have major market share. Will it hurt
the economy? NOPE! it'll actually help it a great deal as it finally enables (is beginning to do
so even now) the ripple effect through all other indiustries. GETTING THINGS DONE!!!
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