adastra22 12 hours ago

...but why?

  • hyperman1 8 hours ago

    Every organization, long term, will have bouts of stagnation or wrong focus. The power of competition is that users have an alternative to flock towards. This both keeps the organizations in check (they know this) or if all else fails, gives us a way to abandon the original.

    Gcc and egcs, or later gcc vs llvm ar good examples in the compiler space. Everyone involved in either organization wants the best for open source compiling, and still the competition pushed innovation to everyone. Intel vs amd is a good example of what happens when one competitor is too far behind:. The other slows down innovation.

    In my opinion, the rust foundation should applaud others implementing the rust language. It will cause some duplicate effort short term, but long term it will keep rust relevant and their own project in a better shape.

    • adastra22 2 hours ago

      “Competition” is not a universally good thing. In this case it leads to balkanization and difficulties for the user base as no compiler will ever be 100% bug for bug compatible with the other.

      Multiple implementations rarely leads to innovation, and more often leads to stagnation.

      • hyperman1 an hour ago

        I disagree here with basically everything.

        Competition tends long term to provide better results, because it allows for multiple opionions by providers and choice by consumers.

        No compiler is 100% bug for bug compatible with future versions of itself. If you happen to depend on bugs, you will be in trouble one day. One way to avoid this is in fact using different compilers from different providers and get an early warning.

        Multiple implementations always leed to more innovation, as different leaders have different priorities causing differences in implementation.

        One problem with software is the dynamic where the original source is very expensive while more copies are de facto free. Meanwhile, switching costs for users are high. This causes winner takes all dynamics where 1 vendor monopolizes a market quickly. This then causes a powerfull position for abuse, causing everyone else to suffer.

        • adastra22 38 minutes ago

          Would you agree that we should have competing standards? Because that’s a comparable situation.

          Please point to an example where competing implementations of a language led to rapid innovation, because I don’t think you will find one.the opposite is what typically happens as the need for compatibility bogs down language development.

  • IshKebab 6 hours ago

    Probably partly because they can, but also it silences a stupid objection to Rust in the Linux kernel which is that LLVM doesn't support all the architectures that GCC does. "What if I want to run Linux on my S/390?"

  • dcgudeman 10 hours ago

    because people what to use rust for developing linux and the preferred toolchain for that is GCC