Argument about reproducible builds on usenet in 1999

[Larry Doolittle]

Friends -

December 1999 thread titled "Time independent checksum(cksum)" on comp.unix.programming.
Huge thanks to emolinare, who managed to save most of usenet and publish
it to usenetarchives.com in 2020.  I'm pretty sure this link will
get you to the thread:
  https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=comp.unix.programmer&mid=PDgyaDhsMyR2ZWYkMUBubnJwMS5kZWphLmNvbT4

The topics will all be very familiar to readers of this list.
It starts with Jayan asking about comparing binaries that might have
difference in their embedded timestamps.
Foreshadowing diffoscope, amiright?

The antagonist is David Schwartz, who correctly says "There are dozens
of complex reasons why what seems to be the same sequence of operations
might produce different end results," but goes on to say "I totally
disagree with your general viewpoint that compilers must provide for
reproducability [sic]."

Dwight Tovey and I (Larry Doolittle) argue for reproducible builds.
I assert "Any program -- especially a mission-critical program like a
compiler -- that cannot reproduce a result at will is broken."  Also
"it's commonplace to take a binary from the net, and check to see if
it was trojaned by attempting to recreate it from source."

Anyway, a possibly interesting trip down memory lane.  Is there a place in
reproducible-builds.org to talk about history?  The concept is clearly
much older than 1999.

  - Larry