most important piece of FLOSS

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 24 May 2006 11:54, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:
> Hi,
> There's someone who mentioned that 'GCC' is the most improtant
> piece of software that was ever written. Many would argue that it's
> 'Linux'. What do you think? Or which do you simply admire?

No one piece of software is more important than any other, the 
important bits all work in unison to deliver a system. It's the 
complete system that's important, not the individual parts. 

gcc is a Free compiler, but you can still build a completely Free 
system using a non-Free compiler. So gcc isn't 100% necessary.

Nothing will run without ld - kinda important at run time.

A kernel is a must-have, but it doesn't have to be Linux. If Linus 
never started his project, we'd probably be using BSD kernels. Or the 
Hurd (yeah, right...)

And all of those rely on glibc - you can't compile gcc without it. If 
any piece of software is more important, it's probably this one. 

-- 
If only me, you and dead people understand hex, 
how many people understand hex?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five