In defense of DECUS C

[Dave Martindale]

Dave Conroy wrote the C compiler which is now DECUS C during several of
his work terms between school terms at the University of Waterloo, and
worked on it for a while in the job he took after graduation.  He liked
UNIX (some of it, anyway) and C, but was working under RSX during these
periods, thus the compiler had to be written in an available language
and the library was oriented towards providing a UNIX-like environment
under RSX.  If he was good enough to put this effort into the public
domain and package it for distribution, when it surely could have been
sold for much money, users could at least refrain from bitching about it.

It has been said that software is worth what you pay for it.  I believe
that in this case, this software is worth far more than what you paid.

Dave eventually went on to the Mark Williams company and wrote the
C compiler which is part of Coherent (a UNIX-like system written from
scratch).  Of course, he wrote it in C, since he now had his previous
compiler available for bootstrapping.

	Dave Martindale