[TUHS] Re: Any UNIX With No C In Userland?

At 2025-03-01T17:17:40-0800, Larry McVoy wrote: What would the alternative have been? If the goal was "to make g++ work", then the code would, at the time, have had to be contributed to the FSF anyway. My understanding is that the FSF's copyright assignment agreements, while scandalous in some circles at the time (and remain so in a few), were far more generous than today's contributor license agreements. So Tiemann would have retained rights to what he wrote, but neither he nor Sun could have used it to stand up a competing proprietary C++ compiler without reimplementing the rest of said compiler, because of [dramatic orchestral sting] the GPL. and the other hand is paying for free g++? Did Sun's proprietary C compiler also handle C++ at that time? If not, then having a C++ story on SunOS and/or Solaris could easily have been more important than fear of lost revenue to a C++ compiler they couldn't offer an alternative to anyway. If it did, it _still_ might have made sense, because while I was only barely conscious of the C++ marketplace at the time, with the language's standardization nigh (for definitions of "nigh" stretching out many more years than anyone planned), Sun's compiler guys might have feared giving up mindshare and influence on the future ISO C++ to Borland or Microsoft. The foregoing speculative concern is consistent with the speed of Sun's pivot to Oak/Java around the time Microsoft showed that (1) Windows NT was going to block further penetration of Unix into the server OS sector and substantially erode Unix's place in workstation and high-end PC configurations _and_ (2) it was going to destroy Borland C++ with Visual C++ by hook or by crook (the sort of stuff that got Bill Gates haled into a CSPAN-televised Congressional hearing a few years later, but with respect to Web browsers). Until you get to a level where decision makers truly have no accountability for anything they do (don't strain yourself looking for examples in the news), I've found (from my minuscule sampling of industry) that business decisions can usually be explained rationally. The problem is that the rationales are often kept secret, sometimes in the name of "strategy" but more often, I think, to keep line staff in their place instead of critically considering management decisions-- unless they're willing to join political alliances and thereby make themselves (even more) vulnerable to dismissal for unspoken reasons. That said, I'm sure it would surprise no one if the "real reason" turned out to be a stupid one. Regards, Branden