> Why are we vendor locked into GNU? Why are we still pretending that’s good or not as evil as the vendor lock-in measures taken by Google, MS, or Apple? Landmi

> Why are we vendor locked into GNU? Why are we still pretending that’s good or not as evil as the vendor lock-in measures taken by Google, MS, or Apple? Landmining your userland and C Standard Library with extensions is exactly what MS does. When MS does it is bad, so why is it acceptable or tolerated when GNU does it? Although you can pay the FSF for copies is (I think) possible calling GNU a vendor similar to "MS or Apple" is too much of a stretch. When "MS or Apple" contributes back agreeing to the license, out of goodwill or because it helps the development, it is a nice behavior in their part; otherwise they are just being themselves. As for why GNU is a different case with regards to extensions... I can think of a few reasons: - The extensions are useful for a reasonable part of the users. - GNU is free software, so you can easily use and benefit from the extensions. - GNU is portable and its license allows even proprietary systems to include it without any problem. - Some of these extensions can be disabled. - Some of these extensions do not break portability if not used. - Some of these extensions helped to shape and evolve what people expect from a UNIX-like system. A few GCC extensions influenced the ISO-C standard. Ok, portability may suffer, but that is the price some groups choose to pay. Considering the gained benefits, I'd say it is a fair price.