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The comments complaining about the choice of license reminded me that a FSF licensing intern did the same, and demanded it be changed due to some false claim ab

The comments complaining about the choice of license reminded me that a FSF licensing intern did the same, and demanded it be changed due to some false claim about it being a derivative work[1]. Let me remind everyone that there was probably a good reason for using a permissive license, and no-one has the right to demand changes based on their definition of freedom - unless they stepped up and contributed. If this truly injures you, you can either do your own rewrite or, like Muse Group, outright buy the rights to the software and relicense. [1] https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/834 https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/834

marcan_42 5y ago
There's also this issue by FSF director Ian Kelling: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 Honestly, it sounds like they're deeply scared of long-standing FSF-backed software having to compete (or even be replaced) with alternatives that just happen not to be GPL (e.g. they have similar thoughts on LLVM/clang), to the point where they decide to troll the issue trackers. It feels really childish.
- josefx 5y ago
  > with alternatives that just happen not to be GPL (e.g. they have similar thoughts on LLVM/clang) LLVM/clang is worse than just GPL, as far as I understand the design of GCC is intentionally horribly bad to make it painful to integrate with a proprietary tool chain. Of course this means that things like refactoring support end up being basically impossible to build on GCC, so people move to clang out of necessity.
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    Something something those who give up software freedom for software's usefulness deserve neither something something.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    It's both a technical issue and a political issue; RMS himself has repeatedly advocated against interfaces that would expose internal representations that GCC uses because they could be used to build proprietary add-ons. These days GCC does have a plugin interface, but they came up with a really funny hack to try to stop people from using proprietary plugins. Programs compiled with gcc can require linking with libgcc, and the libgcc license is "GPL, except it doesn't apply to software compiled with GCC and all-Free plugins". So their idea is that if you add a proprietary plug-in to GCC, that makes all code compiled like that have to be GPLed instead. It is, of course, questionable whether this hack would hold up in court. It is also rather useless, because it's not hard to reimplement enough of libgcc to make it work. For example, the Linux kernel only links with libgcc for a few architectures.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > Honestly, it sounds like they're deeply scared of long-standing FSF-backed software having to compete (or even be replaced) with alternatives that just happen not to be GPL They are, for good reason. Big companies hate open source, despite their claims to the contrary. Look at Apple's proprietary forks of all the BSD stuff, and handset manufacturers' proprietary forks of Android. The FSF should absolutely be doing everything in their power to minimize how often this happens.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    > Look at Apple's proprietary forks of all the BSD stuff What forks of what stuff?
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      OS X, Darwin off the top of my head
      - marcan_42 5y ago
        https://opensource.apple.com/release/macos-115.html https://opensource.apple.com/release/macos-115.html Here's the kernel, including all the BSD stuff: https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-7195.141.2/ https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-7195.141.2/ You can compile it yourself and run macOS with your own kernel build. Here's a blog by Apple's head of XNU development explaining how that works: https://kernelshaman.blogspot.com/2021/02/building-xnu-for-macos-112-intel-apple.html?m=1 https://kernelshaman.blogspot.com/2021/02/building-xnu-for-m...
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        Yeah and the open source people gave up, it’s like giving you a free recipe for a beef Wellington in a world they control of food. Nothing uses Darwin besides Apple
        5y ago

marcan_42 5y ago

There's also this issue by FSF director Ian Kelling: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 Honestly, it sounds like they're deeply scared of long-standing FSF-backed software having to compete (or even be replaced) with alternatives that just happen not to be GPL (e.g. they have similar thoughts on LLVM/clang), to the point where they decide to troll the issue trackers. It feels really childish.

josefx 5y ago
> with alternatives that just happen not to be GPL (e.g. they have similar thoughts on LLVM/clang) LLVM/clang is worse than just GPL, as far as I understand the design of GCC is intentionally horribly bad to make it painful to integrate with a proprietary tool chain. Of course this means that things like refactoring support end up being basically impossible to build on GCC, so people move to clang out of necessity.
- Joker_vD 5y ago
  Something something those who give up software freedom for software's usefulness deserve neither something something.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  It's both a technical issue and a political issue; RMS himself has repeatedly advocated against interfaces that would expose internal representations that GCC uses because they could be used to build proprietary add-ons. These days GCC does have a plugin interface, but they came up with a really funny hack to try to stop people from using proprietary plugins. Programs compiled with gcc can require linking with libgcc, and the libgcc license is "GPL, except it doesn't apply to software compiled with GCC and all-Free plugins". So their idea is that if you add a proprietary plug-in to GCC, that makes all code compiled like that have to be GPLed instead. It is, of course, questionable whether this hack would hold up in court. It is also rather useless, because it's not hard to reimplement enough of libgcc to make it work. For example, the Linux kernel only links with libgcc for a few architectures.
josephcsible 5y ago
> Honestly, it sounds like they're deeply scared of long-standing FSF-backed software having to compete (or even be replaced) with alternatives that just happen not to be GPL They are, for good reason. Big companies hate open source, despite their claims to the contrary. Look at Apple's proprietary forks of all the BSD stuff, and handset manufacturers' proprietary forks of Android. The FSF should absolutely be doing everything in their power to minimize how often this happens.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  > Look at Apple's proprietary forks of all the BSD stuff What forks of what stuff?
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    OS X, Darwin off the top of my head
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      https://opensource.apple.com/release/macos-115.html https://opensource.apple.com/release/macos-115.html Here's the kernel, including all the BSD stuff: https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-7195.141.2/ https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-7195.141.2/ You can compile it yourself and run macOS with your own kernel build. Here's a blog by Apple's head of XNU development explaining how that works: https://kernelshaman.blogspot.com/2021/02/building-xnu-for-macos-112-intel-apple.html?m=1 https://kernelshaman.blogspot.com/2021/02/building-xnu-for-m...
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        Yeah and the open source people gave up, it’s like giving you a free recipe for a beef Wellington in a world they control of food. Nothing uses Darwin besides Apple
        5y ago