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  62. <a name="History"></a>
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  64. <p>
  65. Next: <a href="How-It-Works.html#How-It-Works" accesskey="n" rel="next">How It Works</a>, Previous: <a href="Overview.html#Overview" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Overview</a>, Up: <a href="Overview.html#Overview" accesskey="u" rel="up">Overview</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="BFD-Index.html#BFD-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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  68. <a name="History-1"></a>
  69. <h3 class="section">1.1 History</h3>
  70. <p>One spur behind BFD was the desire, on the part of the GNU 960 team at
  71. Intel Oregon, for interoperability of applications on their COFF and
  72. b.out file formats. Cygnus was providing GNU support for the team, and
  73. was contracted to provide the required functionality.
  74. </p>
  75. <p>The name came from a conversation David Wallace was having with Richard
  76. Stallman about the library: RMS said that it would be quite hard&mdash;David
  77. said &ldquo;BFD&rdquo;. Stallman was right, but the name stuck.
  78. </p>
  79. <p>At the same time, Ready Systems wanted much the same thing, but for
  80. different object file formats: IEEE-695, Oasys, Srecords, a.out and 68k
  81. coff.
  82. </p>
  83. <p>BFD was first implemented by members of Cygnus Support; Steve
  84. Chamberlain (<code>sac@cygnus.com</code>), John Gilmore
  85. (<code>gnu@cygnus.com</code>), K. Richard Pixley (<code>rich@cygnus.com</code>)
  86. and David Henkel-Wallace (<code>gumby@cygnus.com</code>).
  87. </p>
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