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Comment by the-dude | Hacker News Reader

There is no FA. It is an email from 2015.

I am just questioning if this submission here and now is part of the seemingly concerted effort to discredit RMS in the last few days.

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This paranoia is getting embarrassing.

Being paranoid does not mean they are not after you.

I'm on my way to you. Stay right there

You the guy in the white van?

I think it's fair. GCC made their decision many years ago. Even this email is 6 years old. Why post it now? Methinks because it fits a narrative that RMS is an ineffective leader that wouldn't know a good decision if it landed on his face.

I thought it was more connected with the recent spree of discussion about replacing C (and GCC) with Rust (and LLVM) in GNU/Linux. A few weeks back this semed to start with a dependency on a Rust compiler by the Python cryptography module, which most notably infuriated the Gentoo community because it meant things broke on some niche architectures not supported by LLVM. There's been a number of articles since then about replacing core utils with Rust implementations and just yesterday an interview with Linus Torvalds about the future potential for using Rust and LLVM for the Linux kernel.

The original poster here. There is a popular belief that GCC made a strategic decision to make it harder to embed to thwart proprietary softwares and this is all RMS's fault. This posting shows that it's partly false, as RMS would like to accept the proposal if he had seen the proposal earlier (I assume he received but wasn't aware of the actual proposal). I was unaware of this posting before, was amused, checked that there are no recent resubmissions, and submitted. I don't expect you to believe me though.

RMS own words and actions have done far more harm to any "good reputation" he might have had, way before anyone on HN... posted links to those words and actions.

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