Re: IDL for linux on Macintosh ppc

[pit(at)phys.uu.nl (Peter Suetterlin)]

In article <8ibmsv$k87$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
	Andrew <noymer@my-deja.com> writes:

> It always amazes me to see companies who have a product
> that runs on "Linux 6.0 or later" (vs. a kernel version
> number).  And it amazes me even more to see companies
> (like RSI) who support only one distro.

Well, SAP is also one of them.  I can sort of understand that in cases
where the Software Product is tightly related to e.g. boot concept or
filesystem hierarchy.
IDL is not such a product, so I cannot understand their position.

The only important thing is libraries, indeed.

And there, opposite to the claims of RSI before, the problem often
even reverses, e.g. you have to upgrade your system software because
you want to upgrade some software package that is linked against newer
versions of a library.

The other way around (upgrade of the system but keep old version of
software) is *never* critical for an open source system, as
you always will have the option to get/keep the old version of the
libraries, too (I still run an IDL 4.01 (libc4) on a SuSE 6.4
(glibc2.1) system.

> It seems to me that companies vary in their commitment to
> Linux and the ones with low commitment come up with
> whatever excuse is convenient to justify their stance.

Indeed, that's what it is in most cases:  Excuses, not reasons.

  Peter

-- 
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Dr. Peter "Pit" Suetterlin                 http://www.astro.uu.nl/~suetter
Sterrenkundig Instituut Utrecht
Tel.: +31 (0)30 253 5225                   P.Suetterlin@astro.uu.nl
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