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Not true - if you compare various cases of GPL vs BSD, the theory of GPL helping the project just doesn’t hold. See MySQL vs Postgres, or GCC vs LLVM, or vario
by trasz 8y ago
Not true - if you compare various cases of GPL vs BSD, the theory of GPL helping the project just doesn’t hold. See MySQL vs Postgres, or GCC vs LLVM, or various MTAs.
- pjmlp 8y agoLLVM in particular lacks many improvements done by embedded OEMs, one of them being Sony which has only contributed parts of the PS4 toolchain.
- trasz 8y agoPerhaps. But GCC lacks those same improvements from Sony, simply because Sony went with LLVM instead, doesn’t it?
- pjmlp 8y agoThat is exactly the point, with GCC the community would have enjoyed those improvements. With LLVM, Sony gets to cut down their compiler research budget, and the community sees whatever Sony feels like giving back, minor improvements without the juicy optimizer sauce that actually matters. Personally I don't care, given I use mostly commercial stuff nowadays, but I do see the return of shareware long term. Then MIT/BSD license advocates can consider how much those licenses are actually worth to the overall community.
- trasz 8y agoNo - with GCC those improvements never got written, because the license used by GCC prevented it from happening in the first place. The decision whether to share the code usually happens before choosing the codebase to build upon, not the other way around.
- pjmlp 8y agoIn this specific case, Sony would have been forced to actually spend money doing a compiler from the ground up instead of cutting costs down costs while giving a few crumbs back to keep the plebe happy. What I find ironic with the current anti-GPL trend is the eventual return of the shareware model, then lets see how well the MIT/BSD folks will appreciate it.
- trasz 8y agoOnly if you assume the only choices were 1. using GCC or 2. writing from scratch. Thing is, this assumption obviously doesn't match reality. Absurd assumptions -> absurd conclusions. And no, BSD has nothing to do with shareware. Shareware was never about sharing sources; meanwhile, BSD-licensed projects are fine with respect to sharing - just take a look at Postgres, LLVM, FreeBSD, X11, or Python. GPL is an attempt to protect from a threat which was never real, and by doing so it makes life harder for everyone.
- pjmlp 8y agoI have plenty of crufty shareware CDs and most likely unreadable floppies with source code on those .zip and .arj files. FreeBSD vs what Linux has achieved, LLVM still lacking many of the hardware targets supported by GCC don't seem to be doing that great in company contributions. The others I don't know well enough to comment on. Lets check again in about 10 years to see how far they managed to develop themselves. Maybe I will be wrong, maybe not.