Re: [Fedora-packaging] Re: paragraph on shipping static numerical libs

[Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 freenet de>]

On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 00:41 -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Axel Thimm (Axel Thimm ATrpms net) said: 
> > > The right fix here is to educate scientific programmers as to why
> > > statically linking in libraries doesn't actually get them what they
> > > want, and that it is broken.
> > 
> > Actually the situation in scientific camps is not that easy. There are
> > tons of situations where having a statically linked binary saves the
> > day. You typically have a complete mix of very heterogeneous Linux
> > distributions and releases thereof with semi-bogus libs under
> > /usr/local as a bonus. At least that's what larger phys/chem
> > institutions and educational facilities look like in
> > de/uk/fr/ru.
> 
> So, my reading of this is 'larger phys/chem institutions are
> crazy and don't understand sane systems management'. Am I reading
> this wrong?
Yes.  

In most cases, these people are non-IT people with little to no skills
in program development nor interest in program development. 

To them, programming (and IT in general) is an unloved, unavoidable
duty, they actually are not interested in nor are they interested in
getting deeper into it.

They use Linux/Unix because "somebody told them so", they program in
Fortran, Cobol, Algol or Modula, because "somebody told them so", they
do something "this way" because they don't know better and don't "want
to know better".

Ralf