Re: Comming release

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at zembu dot com>]

   Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 18:07:30 -0800
   From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@NUXI.com>

   On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 09:03:29PM -0500, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
   >    I wanted to ask if there are plans for a Binutils release anytime soon.
   > 
   > Unfortunately not.  None of the maintainers have time.

   Please excuse my ignorance of Binutils, but since Sourceware is hosting
   the development of Binutils, isn't Cygnus overseeing Binutils development
   rather than FSF?  [simular to GCC]

I'm not sure just how to answer your question.

Cygnus per se does not oversee gcc development; the gcc steering
committee does.  The gcc steering committee has several people from
Cygnus, and several people from outside Cygnus.

I don't know whether that means that the FSF is overseeing gcc
development or not.  To speak of the FSF as overseeing development
seems somewhat nebulous to me.  Most GNU projects do not have any
formal FSF control.  The FSF proper is a small group.  What the FSF
asks for, they generally get; I don't know whether that means that
they are overseeing development or not.

Anyhow, the binutils have no formal arrangement.  Several people have
write access, including several people at Cygnus.  I more or less act
as the final word on which patches should go in, mainly because I've
been working on the code for so long that I know a lot of the weird
interactions to watch out for.  But I don't have any formal control;
the binutils maintainers are mostly a reasonable bunch, and we haven't
had any serious disagreements.

I made the last few binutils releases, but since then my spare time
has completely evaporated.  I used to think that I had no spare time.
Now I really don't.

I personally have no formal connection with either Cygnus or the FSF.
I used to work at Cygnus, but I left a year and a half ago.

I'm just laying things out as I see them.  Others may not agree with
my view.  In any case, I don't see a binutils release happening in the
near-term.  However, I might be pleasantly surprised.

Ian