Die GNU autotools

[Elazar Leibovich]

I think you described correctly the root of the disagreement.
I believe that any software (including free software) is written not as to
implement an Aristotle's Ideal, but to be used by as many people as
possible, and to be useful for them.
So when I'm writing a free software, I'm trying to make it as useful as
possible to most people. If most people are having 2Gb of memory on their
machine they probably won't care for an extra 20Mb, so they'll be happy to
have a better tested software and pay for that in 20Mb of memory of the JVM
(they would only pay of course if they're running two JVM based
software simultaneously, which is not so common). Of course, I won't force
my user to use extra 200Mb, that could matter, but nowadays 20Mb in those
settings are not such a big deal. Wasting 20 minutes of my user's time on
updating his JVM is. I also want to support my users, even though I'm
writing a free software. I really want it to be useful.

You see free software writing as an art. The software you write must
implement the ideal best software, even if it's not the most practical
solution. So, for instance, you'll use an extremely complicated algorithm,
which is hard to debug and maintain, even though it gives no
user visible performance gain, only because it is "the right thing to do".
It is a plausible stance I can understand, and I understand why this stance
cause you to prefer the autosuite for every project, despite its costs.

And by the way, if a software is working correctly and using 10Mb, and
another software does the same thing with 5Mb of memory usage, I won't
switch. It really wouldn't matter for me, the difference between both is
immeasurable for my computer usage patterns.

But what I'm really bothered is by your claim "developer time is cheap, it's
FSF, somebody[*] will do that". I really don't think the situation nowadays
is that we have too much working hands for free software. Especially in open
source software for which you need special expertise
http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2010/07/graphics-drivers.html

[*]
<http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring02/white/poems.html>When our mother
went
Down to the town for the day,
She said, "somebody has to
Clean all this away.
Somebody, SOMEBODY
Has to, you see."
Then she picked out two Somebodies.
Sally and me.
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring02/white/poems.html

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Nadav Har'El <nyh at math.technion.ac.il>wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 13, 2011, Elazar Leibovich wrote about "Re: Die GNU autotools":
> > Few years ago, you were correct, harddisks were thin, memory was spare,
> and
> > if you could use a preinstalled library it'll be a great benefit.
> > Nowadays, developer time is expensive, QA time is expensive, support time
> is
> > expensive. Memory is cheap, CPU is cheap, disk space is cheap. So I'd
> rather
> > include another Megabyte of library the user already have, than make
> > building and supporting my software more complicated=more expensive.
>
> I think we were talking about free software.
>
> With free software, developer time is "cheap" (in the sense that if you
> don't
> do something, someone else with more free time or more dedication, can),
> while user resources are expensive (in the sense that if program Y uses
> half the memory of X and does the same thing, I'll just switch to Y without
> looking back).
>
> > As mentioned, Mathworks would rather include a compatible JVM with
> matlab,
> > then use the one availible on the computer. The cost of that is miniscule
> > (another 20Mb on the disk, maybe a bit more memory, assuming the user is
>
> This kind of corporate thinking doesn't fly with free software.
> Can you imagine a Linux distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu coming with a
> dozen copies of the JVM, just because the devlopers wouldn't bother
> themselves
> to use the system's on copy of JVM?
>
> And you know what, I once used a commercial instant-messaging client which,
> like you described, came with its own copy of a JVM. When I realized it was
> taking 100 MB of memory, and (at the time) I had only 512 MB, I simply
> dumped it and replaced it with pidgin, which took 1/10th the amount of
> memory.
>
> > This is not always true, but I think that nowadays adding a library of
> 100Kb
> > to almost any software, *always* costs less than maintaining it with
> ifdefs.
>
> Not to the users.
>
>
> --
> Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, Jan 13 2011, 8 Shevat
> 5771
> nyh at math.technion.ac.il
> |-----------------------------------------
> Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Tact: The ability to describe others
> as
> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |they see themselves. - Abraham
> Lincoln
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/pipermail/linux-il/attachments/20110113/34d05374/attachment-0001.html>