Re: Updating to Autoconf 2.5x

Joe Buck
2003-06-10T00:33:07Z

I wrote:
> > So first Christopher objects to a list having @codesourcery.com at
> > the end, and now Alexandre wants @redhat.com at the end? Thanks to
> > both companies for giving us so much free software work, but let's
> > avoid any company conflicts by avoiding use of either company's
> > domain as much as we can, OK? To do otherwise will just confuse
> > people into thinking that something is a single-company effort, when
> > it is not.

On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 07:45:03PM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> Well, fair is fair. You want a list on gcc.gnu.org for a project that
> involves more non-gcc projects than gcc projects.

Nowhere did I say that (that I wanted the name to be @gcc.gnu.org).
My real preference would be that we'd go to a scheme like @tool.gnu.org
for each tool, and use @gnu.org lists for common infrastructure.

> Let's avoid any
> project conflicts by avoiding project names in the mailing list as
> much as we can, ok? To do otherwise will just confuse people into
> thinking that something is a single-project effort, when it is not.

There are problems with either choice of name.

> Most of the projects involved in this switch happen to be hosted on
> sources.redhat.com, so it makes sense to put the mailing list there.
> Heck, even gcc itself is hosted on sources.redhat.com.

No kidding. We fought over that with Stallman for about a year, and only
managed to put egcs and GCC together again by agreeing to thoroughly hide
that fact (the choice was doing it that way or using GNU's development
machines, which are better now but that were really screwed up in the
98-99 time frame).

Now, if the folks at CodeSourcery really don't care that you slap the Red
Hat name on one more thing, I would withdraw my objection TEMPORARILY.
But I'd really like for the projects that develop code that belongs to
the FSF use neutral names.

This is not an attack on Red Hat; after all, when we were discussing
starting a project that eventually became egcs; it was folks at Cygnus
who asked me to join on the basis that I would play a neutral referee
role, to avoid criticisms that Cygnus was just taking over. I deeply
respect the Cygnus/Red Hat folks for working that way. So that's
what I'm doing right now.

Now, if Zack and Mark want to tell me it's no big deal, I'll back off
for the time being: we probably can't solve this issue satisfactorily
in the very short term. But uses of the "sources.redhat.com" name in GNU
should *decrease* with time, not increase.