See also: last week's Back page page.

Linux links of the week

Spanish-speaking readers may want to have a look at Proyecto Lucas, which claims to be the largest repository of Spanish-language Linux documentation out there.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

Letters to the editor

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 20:56:07 +0200
From: Toon Moene <toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: GNU Cobol

I read with some amusement the following blurb in LWN of the 24th of
June:

> GNU COBOL is now under development, as a result of Rildo
> Pragana's decision to release the source code for a COBOL compiler
> he created for MSDOS years ago. Alan Cox has apparently thrown in
> some patches, as has Rildo, and now it actually produces GNU
> assembler (gas). Of course, the goal is actually to get it to produce 
> C code. That would definitely help a lot of old COBOL projects move in
> the right direction ... [Thanks to David S de Lis]

A casual reader might interpret the last sentence as meaning that the
only way to save old Cobol projects is to translate the Cobol code into
C.

I think this a somewhat naive view on the reasons why code is
maintainable or not.

Cobol has its strengths in dealing with the processing of business
oriented data:  It supports a declarative syntax to enable complex
conversions between machine and human readable data.

Converting Cobol to C would do nothing to improve the control flow of
the programs, while making its data handling completely unreadable.

Unless the only human resource one has available is C programmers, I
would strongly discourage such a conversion.

What the world needs is a free Cobol compiler - if this is the way to
get one, even if it is not within the framework of the GNU Compiler
Collection (which would make it retargetable to other architectures than
the Intel ia32 model, among other benefits), then so be it.

-- 
Toon Moene (toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl)
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 346 214290; Fax: +31 346 214286
GNU Fortran: http://world.std.com/~burley/g77.html

Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:48:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: <kend@cisco.com>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: Mindcraft Mk. II.

Well, the results are in, and we didn't win.  What do we do now?

Firstly, it's obvious that these benchmarks have shown portions of
Linux that need attention.  I am, therefore, hopeful that these failings
can be addressed quickly -- I know that several solutions are already
being bandied about.  But that still doesn't change the fact that we
actually *learned* stuff from the Mindcraft fiasco.

1) People *do* listen to the Open Source community.  The mere fact that we
were able to make them recognize how unbalanced the first test was, really
says something.

2) More interestingly, IMHO, is the fact that we learned Linux's own
weaknesses -- things we really hadn't been aware of before, or at least
_as_ aware of.

I therefore suggest that the Linux community, on its own dime, run some
sort of annual benchmark between, say, Solaris X86 or SCO (which nobody
uses, but would be good yardsticks), NT, and Linux.  The results, 
regardless of which way they lean, would be made public -- failings would
be able to be addressed, and triumphs could be crowed about.  But
regardless of the way it went, we'd *know* more.

Perhaps, even, PC Labs would be willing to run the test; I could see them
enjoying a certain amount of prestige from being the moderators, and I'm
pretty sure they have no editorial bias.  Lord knows they'd have more to
lose from biased results than Mindcraft.

We've learned a lot from the recent test -- instead of trying to ignore
it, or think of it as a single data point, let's take advantage of it, in
a way that "closed source", simply put, can't.

Sincerely,

Ken D'Ambrosio
SysAdmin,
Cisco Systems, Inc.

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 09:17:38 -0700 (MST)
From: "M. Leo Cooper" <thegrendel@theriver.com>
To: Linux Weekly News <letters@lwn.net>
Subject: MS Linux?

Amidst all the speculation and rumors about Microsoft coming out with
their own proprietary Linux distribution, it seems that no one has
considered a much more likely scenario. When the Red Hat IPO hits the
market, MS could buy up virtually all the offered stock for $100,000,000
or so (Bill could take it out of petty cash) and thus acquire a name
brand Linux, not to mention the services of the Red Hat sales and service
staff and their engineers and developers.

The question is whether MS would actually gain from this. MS had long
practiced the strategy of buying out competing proprietary products and either
incorporating them into their line or just letting them die. Liquidating a
single Linux distributor, even if it is the largest and most well-known one,
would have little long term effect on the Linux community. But, ah, the
perception of the corporate IT world, that's a different matter.


Mendel

             They said, "You have a blue guitar,
             You do not play things as they are."
             The man replied, "Things as they are
             Are changed upon the blue guitar."
                  ---Wallace Stevens
        ===============================================
        + http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/ +
        ===============================================

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 22:12:45 -0700
From: Matt Ettus <matt@ettus.com>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: EE CAD on Linux story

The folks at intusoft (www.intusoft.com) are trying to gauge interest in
a Linux port of their software, which is like spice, but with schematic
capture and more features.

They already have a solaris port, and said that 200 indications of
interest would cause them to do the port.

This would be a huge help to those of us EE's trying to get our
companies converted over to Linux.

You can send mail to info@intusoft.com or see their web page,
http://www.intusoft.com