Libraries disappearing from compat-libstdc++-296

[Kevin Kofler]

Bill Davidsen <davidsen <at> tmr.com> writes:
> That's a really offensive comment. It assumes that business people who use 
> commercial software are just a bunch of clueless assholes.

No, it just says that they didn't consider the consequences of using 
proprietary software when they made their decision and they got what they 
deserved.

It doesn't mean they are "assholes" or even necessarily "clueless", just that 
they have no right to complain because that situation is of their own chosing.

> Writing a major applications (a) can cost an order of magnitude more than
> buying, (b) delays the solution, sometimes for years, and (c) often requires
> information about hardware which just isn't available. If it weren't for
> proprietary software many things would never get done at all.

Using Free Software does not necessarily mean writing it from scratch, often 
there's an existing Free Software project one can use and/or contribute to.

I can understand using a proprietary tool if there's really nothing available 
in Free Software, but I doubt this is the majority of the cases.

> Leave business to business people, who have to do things on time and under 
> budget, and who choose achievable solutions. I don't know what you're good
> at, but tact and business reality doesn't seem to be in your skill set.

And this is a completely unwarranted personal attack. Do you really have to 
resort to ad hominem attacks? It shows that you're running out of arguments.

All I'm saying is that the ability to rebuild for newer versions of system 
libraries is a very practical argument for choosing Free Software. Face it, 
GNU/Linux is not going to be binary-compatible forever, not even proprietary 
OSes do that (just look at how Apple dropped Classic and is now phasing out 
Carbon, Mac OS is not even source compatible with older versions, let alone 
binary!), maybe with the exception of one (and I guess I don't have to tell you 
which one... its the one whose legacy cruft impedes progress significantly, for 
example it's the only major modern non-embedded OS still not using UTF-8 as the 
default 8-bit charset). Being able to rebuild your software against newer 
libraries is essential for continued use of it.

        Kevin Kofler