9 ms·

A turning point for GNU libc

192 points by corbet 15y ago

rcfox 15y ago
Are you sure you should be submitting "LWN subscriber-only content"? It seems like they might not be too happy about that.
- stfp 15y ago
  I think OP is LWN's editor!
- corbet 15y ago
  Check my account name against the author of the article :) I appreciate your concern. I do occasionally post a subscriber link in a place like HN or reddit with the idea of sharing some useful news and making people aware of what we do. So you shouldn't be worrying about me abusing the LWN subscriber link mechanism (which I implemented in the first place); instead, you should worry about my shameless and transparent marketing efforts :)
  - amackera 15y ago
    Thanks for sharing, that was an informative article! Well done.
  - sounds 15y ago
    Could you please comment on the appropriateness of other subscribers sharing a link like this? Within certain bounds - glibc being a good example - the general interest in the article might justify its widespread use. I would hazard a guess that for the majority of articles, LWN would prefer subscriber links be kept relatively "out of public circulation." Thanks!
    - cube13 15y ago
      Keep in mind that the content stays behind the paywall for 1 week before non-subscribers can access it. So unless a paid subscriber is posting links to every single article, I don't think it's that much of an issue for LWN. So given that it's really only subscribers-only for about 24 hours more(the original article was posted on March 28th, I don't think that LWN cares all that much.
    - dredmorbius 15y ago
      That's why the share links where created. When I share subscriber-only LWN content (which I do occasionally), I specifically call out the quality of the content and the fact that it's a subscription site. One of the few I actually do pay money to.
  - wickedchicken 15y ago
    > you should worry about my shameless and transparent marketing efforts :) Which totally just worked on me, by the way.
- lambda 15y ago
  As OP has pointed out, he's the LWN editor. But besides that, LWN has a feature to allow sharing subscriber-only links for a reason. They want people to share those links and discuss them occasionally, as long as someone doesn't create an aggregator that posts all subscriber-only links. And all of the articles become public after a week, anyhow. They are not trying to prevent people from discussing or reading articles; they are merely trying to encourage people to subscribe if they want to be able to see all of the subscriber-only content as soon as it's posted.
- dannyobrien 15y ago
  Can I just say that if you can subscribe, LWN is definitely worth every penny. It's everything a professional tech journal should be: detailed, topical, opinionated without being arbitrary, and consistently informative. They also do good deals on institutional subscriptions, which is useful if you want to talk to anybody else about what you've read :)
16s 15y ago
These links (not mine) may help explain a lot to those who may be unfamiliar with Ulrich: http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/Ulrich_Drepper_Is_A_.html http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/Ulrich_Drepper_Is_A_.html
- zoul 15y ago
  Sweet Jesus, things like this really illustrate some dark corners of free software development: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4980 http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4980 Where the high-publicity trolling in the later part of the discussion is even worse than Uli's initial stubborness.
justauser 15y ago
Is eglibc likely to merge into glibc? I was under the impression that one of the reasons Debian moved from glibc to eglibc was friction with the project maintainer.
- adestefan 15y ago
  From what I've been reading, there will be efforts to remerge.
luriel 15y ago
> The kernel may be the core of a Linux system, but neither users nor applications deal with the kernel directly. The amount of complexity in a modern libc, glibc in particular, is mind-boggling. One thing I love about Go is that it completely bypasses even libc, the Go runtime and stdlib use syscalls directly(well, except on Windows, for obvious reasons), in a way a Go program is "closer to the metal" than a C program.
- drucken 15y ago
  Unfortunately, Go with its mandatory GC is about as appropriate for systems programming as Java, regardless of how its marketed...
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    For the more traditional definitions of "systems programming", yes. I would agree with that. However I don't think anybody is really marketing Go for that niche.
    - wglb 15y ago
      Originally they were targeting "systems programming", and, being roughly the contemporary of the most well-known go authors, "systems programming" used to mean compilers, assemblers, and the like. In this meaning, this would also include browsers, although Mozilla is going for Rust. Today, "systems programming" is more taken to mean "kernel programming", and I don't get the sense that is what was meant by the senior authors of go.
      - rhizome 15y ago
        Originally they were targeting "systems programming" Choose the greatest impediment and cite it as a primary goal.
        wglb 15y ago
        I am not quite sure if I follow you. Are you saying that "systems programming" is the greatest impediment?
sneak 15y ago
I think the news here should be "lots of normal people are still surprised that the FOSS movement is littered with uncooperative sperglords everywhere you look". The deeper and more complex a project, the higher my expectation for this type of behavior. I imagine a big venn diagram of "manages ultra-complex software in use by millions" and "social skills". Linus, of course, being the shining counterexample. Seriously though, anyone familiar with FOSS projects should be entirely unsurprised by this. If you think I'm joking, go read some of Stallman's rants or peruse esr's "how to have sex" faq.
- joshu 15y ago
  sperglords is a term i plan to use in the future. (i think you mean a disjoint venn diagram)
thedeuce 15y ago
typical opensores; project finally free from the shackles of the man with the iron fist...immediately into phase two...licensing arguments. yay!!
neuroelectronic 15y ago
When someone takes a project as fundamental as glibc and takes dictatorial control, it either means that the developer has a hidden agenda, or the developer has so many hacks and tribal knowledge, that he's afraid that any change to the code would interact in odd ways and break things. What are the odds that his branch has decades old bugs in it still, bugs that only he is aware of? Pretty high I bet. Now he's head of Goldman Sachs technical dept? Perhaps they admire his ability to take and keep control of something highly-technical while being impervious to critique due to the unapproachable of his entire demeanor.
jbarham 15y ago
"Also significant is the fact that Ulrich left Red Hat in September, 2010; ...he is now VP, Technology Division at Goldman Sachs." For me this is the punch line to the story. I wonder how he's liking wearing a shirt and tie to the office.
- duaneb 15y ago
  If I remember his temperament correctly, he'll love it on Wall Street. He'll have an entire division to yell at.

192 points by corbet 15y ago

rcfox 15y ago

Are you sure you should be submitting "LWN subscriber-only content"? It seems like they might not be too happy about that.

stfp 15y ago
I think OP is LWN's editor!
corbet 15y ago
Check my account name against the author of the article :) I appreciate your concern. I do occasionally post a subscriber link in a place like HN or reddit with the idea of sharing some useful news and making people aware of what we do. So you shouldn't be worrying about me abusing the LWN subscriber link mechanism (which I implemented in the first place); instead, you should worry about my shameless and transparent marketing efforts :)
- amackera 15y ago
  Thanks for sharing, that was an informative article! Well done.
- sounds 15y ago
  Could you please comment on the appropriateness of other subscribers sharing a link like this? Within certain bounds - glibc being a good example - the general interest in the article might justify its widespread use. I would hazard a guess that for the majority of articles, LWN would prefer subscriber links be kept relatively "out of public circulation." Thanks!
  - cube13 15y ago
    Keep in mind that the content stays behind the paywall for 1 week before non-subscribers can access it. So unless a paid subscriber is posting links to every single article, I don't think it's that much of an issue for LWN. So given that it's really only subscribers-only for about 24 hours more(the original article was posted on March 28th, I don't think that LWN cares all that much.
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    That's why the share links where created. When I share subscriber-only LWN content (which I do occasionally), I specifically call out the quality of the content and the fact that it's a subscription site. One of the few I actually do pay money to.
- wickedchicken 15y ago
  > you should worry about my shameless and transparent marketing efforts :) Which totally just worked on me, by the way.
lambda 15y ago
As OP has pointed out, he's the LWN editor. But besides that, LWN has a feature to allow sharing subscriber-only links for a reason. They want people to share those links and discuss them occasionally, as long as someone doesn't create an aggregator that posts all subscriber-only links. And all of the articles become public after a week, anyhow. They are not trying to prevent people from discussing or reading articles; they are merely trying to encourage people to subscribe if they want to be able to see all of the subscriber-only content as soon as it's posted.
dannyobrien 15y ago
Can I just say that if you can subscribe, LWN is definitely worth every penny. It's everything a professional tech journal should be: detailed, topical, opinionated without being arbitrary, and consistently informative. They also do good deals on institutional subscriptions, which is useful if you want to talk to anybody else about what you've read :)

16s 15y ago

These links (not mine) may help explain a lot to those who may be unfamiliar with Ulrich: http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/Ulrich_Drepper_Is_A_.html http://urchin.earth.li/~twic/Ulrich_Drepper_Is_A_.html

zoul 15y ago
Sweet Jesus, things like this really illustrate some dark corners of free software development: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4980 http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4980 Where the high-publicity trolling in the later part of the discussion is even worse than Uli's initial stubborness.

justauser 15y ago

Is eglibc likely to merge into glibc? I was under the impression that one of the reasons Debian moved from glibc to eglibc was friction with the project maintainer.

adestefan 15y ago
From what I've been reading, there will be efforts to remerge.

luriel 15y ago

> The kernel may be the core of a Linux system, but neither users nor applications deal with the kernel directly. The amount of complexity in a modern libc, glibc in particular, is mind-boggling. One thing I love about Go is that it completely bypasses even libc, the Go runtime and stdlib use syscalls directly(well, except on Windows, for obvious reasons), in a way a Go program is "closer to the metal" than a C program.

drucken 15y ago
Unfortunately, Go with its mandatory GC is about as appropriate for systems programming as Java, regardless of how its marketed...
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  For the more traditional definitions of "systems programming", yes. I would agree with that. However I don't think anybody is really marketing Go for that niche.
  - wglb 15y ago
    Originally they were targeting "systems programming", and, being roughly the contemporary of the most well-known go authors, "systems programming" used to mean compilers, assemblers, and the like. In this meaning, this would also include browsers, although Mozilla is going for Rust. Today, "systems programming" is more taken to mean "kernel programming", and I don't get the sense that is what was meant by the senior authors of go.
    - rhizome 15y ago
      Originally they were targeting "systems programming" Choose the greatest impediment and cite it as a primary goal.
      - wglb 15y ago
        I am not quite sure if I follow you. Are you saying that "systems programming" is the greatest impediment?

sneak 15y ago

I think the news here should be "lots of normal people are still surprised that the FOSS movement is littered with uncooperative sperglords everywhere you look". The deeper and more complex a project, the higher my expectation for this type of behavior. I imagine a big venn diagram of "manages ultra-complex software in use by millions" and "social skills". Linus, of course, being the shining counterexample. Seriously though, anyone familiar with FOSS projects should be entirely unsurprised by this. If you think I'm joking, go read some of Stallman's rants or peruse esr's "how to have sex" faq.

joshu 15y ago
sperglords is a term i plan to use in the future. (i think you mean a disjoint venn diagram)

thedeuce 15y ago

typical opensores; project finally free from the shackles of the man with the iron fist...immediately into phase two...licensing arguments. yay!!

neuroelectronic 15y ago

When someone takes a project as fundamental as glibc and takes dictatorial control, it either means that the developer has a hidden agenda, or the developer has so many hacks and tribal knowledge, that he's afraid that any change to the code would interact in odd ways and break things. What are the odds that his branch has decades old bugs in it still, bugs that only he is aware of? Pretty high I bet. Now he's head of Goldman Sachs technical dept? Perhaps they admire his ability to take and keep control of something highly-technical while being impervious to critique due to the unapproachable of his entire demeanor.

jbarham 15y ago

"Also significant is the fact that Ulrich left Red Hat in September, 2010; ...he is now VP, Technology Division at Goldman Sachs." For me this is the punch line to the story. I wonder how he's liking wearing a shirt and tie to the office.

duaneb 15y ago
If I remember his temperament correctly, he'll love it on Wall Street. He'll have an entire division to yell at.