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NeXTstep may have been started in the 1980s, but it was still built on many open source (generally BSD licensed at that time) components. Apple hired Chris Lat
by sagarm 15y ago
NeXTstep may have been started in the 1980s, but it was still built on many open source (generally BSD licensed at that time) components.
Apple hired Chris Lattner, who started LLVM when he was a graduate student at UIUC. It may be funding development now, but it wasn't "Apple's" innovation. Apple's primary reason for funding LLVM development was likely to be able to integrate their proprietary software more closely with the compiler, something that GCC is designed to discourage.
The GPL and the Apple store EULA are incompatible. Considering that the GPL has been around for decades, the incompatibility can be considered intentional.
- fluidcruft 15y agoDon't forget the NeXT's failed attempts to steal GCC.
- gillianseed 15y agoSteal is inacurrate, however Jobs tried to combine GCC's backend with Next's proprietary ObjC frontend. He wasn't legally able to do so (he tried to sneak past GPL by distributing them as separate packages and claim that the end-user would do the actual linking) and since he really needed the GCC backend this meant that GCC got ObjC support.
- nirvana 15y agoHow can you "steal" something that is given away for free? Your accusation contains the truth of the matter. No "Free software" is actually free. The F stands for Fascism. Stallman gets to dictate who uses it and who doesn't without regard to what the GPL actually says. At least, thats how it operates. Notice how, Apple using and supporting free software has resulted no end in dishonest accusations from you and others in this thread? This is why I will have nothing to do with your "movement" and oppose it at every turn.
- fluidcruft 15y agoI don't see how commenting on NeXT's attempts to circumvent the GPL was criticizing Apple at all. NeXT's goal was to wrap GCC with a proprietary wrapper thereby appropriating the FSF's work and denying users the freedom to modify and adapt it for their own purposes. Copyright laws are reality. Free software is pragmatically protected by copyright. Misappropriation of copyrighted works is considered "theft"/"stealing" by the groups with which Apple chooses to associate and for which Apple forces restrictive DRM on end users.
- Rusky 15y ago> Apple hired Chris Lattner, who started LLVM when he was a graduate student at UIUC. It may be funding development now, but it wasn't "Apple's" innovation. So what if Lattner wasn't working at Apple? Apple's not a person, it's a corporation; LLVM's not a person, it's a library. Apple funding LLVM now means a great deal more than you're giving credit for. > Apple's primary reason for funding LLVM development was likely to be able to integrate their proprietary software more closely with the compiler, something that GCC is designed to discourage. And that is a technical failing of GCC, kept in for ideological purposes. Yet somehow LLVM remains open source, Clang remains open source, and the half-proprietary system of XCode has something far greater than GCC will probably ever have. In the end, Stallman just happens to be one of the guys who contributed to the GNU system. Personally, I'm confident that something similar would have come along with or without him and the GPL (in fact, you mentioned the BSD license that was applied to many components used in NeXT). People implement many parts of these kinds of systems in undergraduate college courses- they're not exactly new discoveries.