Re: [gnu-prog-discuss] Could automake-generated Makefiles required GNU make?

[Harlan Stenn]

Warren wrote:
> On 11/22/2011 6:02 PM, Harlan Stenn wrote:
> > The BSDs have their good reasons to want to avoid GPL'd code, especially
> > GPL3.
> 
> Besides, why should BSD purity get to hold back the Autotools?

So GNU/Linux purity is fine but BSD purity is not?

> If the distrowatch.com stats are to be believed, *BSD's market share
> is under 1% that of Linux, which itself is only about 1% of the
> overall market of machines the Autotools can reasonably be used on.
> Further reduce that by the percentage of BSD boxes that have not yet
> had gmake installed after installation; 10% maybe?  We're probably
> talking about a set of boxes comprising < 0.001% of the market.  (10%
> of 1% of 1%.)
> 
> The hyperconservative autotools do drop backwards compatibility for 
> marginalized systems occasionally.  I seem to recall that some Ultrix 
> compatibility hacks were dropped recently, for example.
> 
> Not that I'm comparing modern BSDs to Ultrix.  They BSDs probably 
> couldn't be killed off at this point even if one wanted to.  Still, to 
> cater to the limitations of systems commanding something on the order 
> 0.001% of the market seems a *bit* obsessive.

There are %s and there are numbers.  And we all know what they say about
statistics.

I'm refraining, mightily and successfully, from escalating.  At least so
far.

H