7 ms·

This is great! Gcc support opens up more platforms, more targets, and the opportunity to more easily integrate with the various common embedded toolchains that

This is great! Gcc support opens up more platforms, more targets, and the opportunity to more easily integrate with the various common embedded toolchains that are built around gcc. And it's free software, for those that care, this matters.

mistrial9 4y ago
> free software it seems like this term is misunderstood in English to mean "no money" .. perhaps "Libre Software" is a better starting description here
- rascul 4y ago
  The term has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. It doesn't take much to say "free as in speech, not beer" to the few people left who need to understand it.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    > free as in speech, not beer I can never remember which way around this is. I think the "beer" is supposed to be free in the monetary sense and "speech" is supposed to be free in the rights/liberty sense, but the analogy doesn't actually convey this: - Speech is normally both monetarily free and (in certain places) a right - Beer is normally neither monetarily free or a right. But may make you "feel" free, which is another sense entirely. Is this a cultural reference I'm missing?
    - dolni 4y ago
      The first amendment to the US Constitution provides very strong protection for the right to free speech. Presumably that is the origin of "free as in speech".
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        Right, but what about "free as in beer"?
        iex_xei 4y ago
        If I buy you a beer, that's free beer for you.
        klyrs 4y ago
        Which, unless you're my friend, prompts the questions "what else is in this beer" and "what's in it for you." I believe that to be a deliberate choice in the "free as in beer" analogy.
        msbarnett 4y ago
        "Free-as-in-speech, not free-as-in-beer" is just expecting you the hearer to understand that while event advertisements might prominently feature the words "free beer" as an exciting statement that beer is being given away for zero cost to drive interest, zero cost is not the sense in which "free" is being used in "free software"
      - kragen 4y ago
        No, the idea of freedom of speech predates the US Constitution, by decades, centuries, or millennia, depending on your definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File:Freedom_of_Thought_Ben_Franklin.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_development_and_suppression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_Licensing_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_Act#Freedom_of_the_Press_Act_of_1766_and_the_Age_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_A...
    - chrisoverzero 4y ago
      It’s not as complex as you’re choosing to make it. When someone tells you, “There’s free beer at Oktoberfest,” is your first thought that the beer has no monetary cost, or that the beer is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? Now someone tells you, “There’s free speech at Oktoberfest.” Is your first thought that there’s no monetary cost to expression, or that the expression is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? (Happily, Oktoberfest has both.) Think of them as the _slightly_ longer "Free as in 'free beer' " and "Free as in 'free speech' ". When beer is described as “free,” it’s understood to be gratis. When speech is described as free, it’s understood to be libre. These are used as examples for more ambiguous situations, since software can be one, the other, both, or neither.
      - ptspts 4y ago
        How do I get free beer at Oktoberfest?
        apetresc 4y ago
        You don't, but the point is that if there was "free beer" at Oktoberfest the meaning would be unambiguous.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        what is free software?
      - mistrial9 4y ago
        pssst - there are two different words in German for these concepts
    - eddd-ddde 4y ago
      Free as in beer, as when one refers to 'free beer' it's one that you don't pay for. When one says 'free speech' it's one that allows you to do what you want. Former is gratis, latter is libre.
    - rgoulter 4y ago
      > Beer is normally neither monetarily free TBH the main place I've seen the phrase "free beer" is a Simpson's joke: people stand in front of a sign saying "free beer", but after Homer drinks many cups, the sign is revealed in full to say "alcohol-free beer, $5/cup". It's understood that beer normally costs money, so the setup of the joke is that "free beer" is understood without explanation as "beer without costing money".
      - shadowofneptune 4y ago
        Beer was once given away at taverns so people would stick around for the food, which had a price adjusted to make up for the beer. Freeware uses this model.
        jcpst 4y ago
        This also works in the inverse. The kimmelweck sandwich has its orgins in the pubs of western New York. Some gave the sandwich for free, and it was so salty that incentive was created for adding some pints to the tab.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      The culture reference is to commercial goods (like beer) being given away at zero cost as a promotion. (“Beer” is probably not the best example but is conveniently terse; for Boomers, “toasters”—in reference to bank promotions—might be more culturally relevant, for younger generations “-to-play” in reference to F2P games might be, but neither rolls off the tongue as well.)
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Probably you're overthinking it... "free as in speech, not beer": "free speech", the right to say what you want without legal restrictions from the state "free beer", beer you don't need to pay for Nothing to do with beer making you "feel free" (?) or whatever Then again, free speech is not about being able to modify speech, release your own version of another's speech, and so on (e.g. the US has "free speech" but MLK's dream speech is still copyrighted). Perhaps a better slogan would be: "Free as in free sex, not beer" And if the slogan wasn't meant for corporations too, and wasn't coined in the puritan 80s/90s, it might have been...
      - forgotloginonp4 4y ago
        Maybe something more comprehendable would be “free as in Postfix, not Gmail” in that anyone can freely implement an MTA or use existing FOSS, which is different from using for free Gmail, Facebook, first 3 months of AOL, first 10 albums from Columbia House, … https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-columbia-house-made-money-giving-away-music https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-colu...
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    "free software" is still misleading and "free as in speech" is hardly accurate. They both fail to convey what it's really about.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - iib 4y ago
    I have never understood why it was not called "Liberty Software" since the beginning. The confusion disappears, liberty exists in English as a sibling to "libre" from Spanish and French and everybody in the United States, where the term originally comes from, and the rest of the English-speaking world understands what it means. As for the grammar argument, you can--sort of--force `Liberty` to be an adjective (think "Liberty City").
    - darksaints 4y ago
      IMO, Liberty Software sounds like a company or a brand, but free/libre are philosophical concepts. I think it's important that free/libre software be noted for it's philosophy, not it's affiliation to a specific organization.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    I'm not so sure about that; I've certainly met plenty of people who did not understand it. HN is not representative of the wider tech community. And "free as in speech, not beer" actually does little to clarify it IMHO; it only works well if you're already familiar with the concept, but if you're not it only adds to the confusion (free speech is about the freedom to say what you want, so free software is about being able to write whatever software you want?) Now, "free software as in right to repair" would actually clarify it, but trying to get an understandable message out seems to be "unethical" so meh :-/
    - atonse 4y ago
      There are probably even fewer people that know what right to repair is. Free software just isn’t enough anymore because the licenses limit your freedom too. (and even my choice of the word “limit” here will be controversial between the Apache/MIT and the *GPL crowds). Don’t have an easy answer :-)
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles it's fairly well known. And while there are undoubtable many people who don't know what it means, the basic idea is quite obvious from just those three words: "if I bought something, I should have the ability to repair it". The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catch on with the hard-core FSF crowd who seem to think that the only possible step is one giant leap to a Free Software utopia and than any smaller step in that direction is "unethical".
        cmurf 4y ago
        Do many/most people really think they should have the ability to repair it? I'm not sure because they keep buying products where it's expressly not possible to repair it yourself or by a competent 3rd party. So I'm not really sure it has any more meaning than free software means no cost rather than "no one and everyone owns the software".
  - worik 4y ago
    > The term [Free Software] has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. For you and me, maybe. But no, Free Software is often misunderstood. I had to explain the difference on a group dedicated to Linux the other day. It is worth pointing out, every time.
- dancemethis 4y ago
  You'd need to be working at Discord or something to not know that Free Software is a thing.
- bastardoperator 4y ago
  GNU is pretty clear: To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
  - dahart 4y ago
    It might seem clear to those of us who’ve heard the whole story, but free speech isn’t a great analogy at all, which means this will always require a lengthy explanation to someone new to the concept. Free speech is a constitutionally protected right in the US (and something else in other countries) that comes with a list of limitations and exceptions, while “free software” is not in general a legally protected right, and in GNU’s implementation requires a viral license that eliminates some kinds of freedom, e.g., it’s specifically and explicitly not public domain. It’s fine to clarify that “free” doesn’t mean money in this case, but that’s hardly a clear explanation of what it does mean.
- joshcryer 4y ago
  Maybe but "free" should be related to "freedom" more than "not having money." "You're free to use the park," "you're free to use the library." We need more freedom in that sense.
- Halan 4y ago
  Maybe for Americans who cannot see further then their noses or that don’t speak any other language
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    American companies funded by leveraged debt are specifically, exactly paying that money in large amounts to remove any GPL'ish things in their stack. Some other hardware companies are simply failing to comply by the license - catch me if you can, I guess. If so much money is available as "someone else's money" and there is some vague notion that ownership complete is the mission of profit-seeking .. then why not? but what does that do to the value of the work, and the value of the ecosystem, built as GPL? GCC is an engineering marvel, and the basis of two generations of engineering by hundreds of people and companies. Rust joining one of the many languages supported by GCC and stack, is welcome here.
- adastra22 4y ago
  "Libre" is not a word in the English language. Pretty sure that's not going to be clearer.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    feature not a bug? asking a question is the first step to a new understanding
    - adastra22 4y ago
      You’re assuming genuine curiosity which probably isn’t there.
maxwell86 4y ago
The rust compiler can already use GCC as a backend. So I don't see how this opens more platforms than that.
- dleslie 4y ago
  Because that doesn't use the GCC frontend interface, requiring build tools and embedded toolchains to be modified to understand the rust compiler interface. By using GCC it's just another language that the existing toolchain can understand.
  - maxwell86 4y ago
    The Rust module system is radically different from C and C++ and other similar languages in the embedded space. Every build system that has added support for Rust, which aren't many, had to be radically modified to achieve that. None of these supports the GCC Rust frontend, but all of them support the Rust frontend. So if you actually wanted to build any >100 LOC Rust project for embedded targets not supported by LLVM, doing it with the Rust frontend is as easy as just running 1 CLI command to pick its GCC backend. Doing it with the GCC frontend, would require you to either port one of the build systems to support it, or... give the GCC frontend a CLI API that's 100% compatible with the Rust frontend.
    - dleslie 4y ago
      Cargo support for gccrs is part of this project: https://github.com/Rust-GCC/cargo-gccrs https://github.com/Rust-GCC/cargo-gccrs Moreover, modules are less interesting to me in embedded development, for which I'm interested in access to Rust's borrow checker for gaining certainty of small portions of larger projects, which are written in other languages.
  - nickitolas 4y ago
    So it's not about platform support, but about toolchain integration? Who benefits from that, projects using C/C++ who want to use a rust library? Or is it about distro package maintainers?

mistrial9 4y ago

> free software it seems like this term is misunderstood in English to mean "no money" .. perhaps "Libre Software" is a better starting description here

rascul 4y ago
The term has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. It doesn't take much to say "free as in speech, not beer" to the few people left who need to understand it.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > free as in speech, not beer I can never remember which way around this is. I think the "beer" is supposed to be free in the monetary sense and "speech" is supposed to be free in the rights/liberty sense, but the analogy doesn't actually convey this: - Speech is normally both monetarily free and (in certain places) a right - Beer is normally neither monetarily free or a right. But may make you "feel" free, which is another sense entirely. Is this a cultural reference I'm missing?
  - dolni 4y ago
    The first amendment to the US Constitution provides very strong protection for the right to free speech. Presumably that is the origin of "free as in speech".
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      Right, but what about "free as in beer"?
      - iex_xei 4y ago
        If I buy you a beer, that's free beer for you.
        klyrs 4y ago
        Which, unless you're my friend, prompts the questions "what else is in this beer" and "what's in it for you." I believe that to be a deliberate choice in the "free as in beer" analogy.
      - msbarnett 4y ago
        "Free-as-in-speech, not free-as-in-beer" is just expecting you the hearer to understand that while event advertisements might prominently feature the words "free beer" as an exciting statement that beer is being given away for zero cost to drive interest, zero cost is not the sense in which "free" is being used in "free software"
    - kragen 4y ago
      No, the idea of freedom of speech predates the US Constitution, by decades, centuries, or millennia, depending on your definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File:Freedom_of_Thought_Ben_Franklin.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_development_and_suppression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_Licensing_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_Act#Freedom_of_the_Press_Act_of_1766_and_the_Age_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_A...
  - chrisoverzero 4y ago
    It’s not as complex as you’re choosing to make it. When someone tells you, “There’s free beer at Oktoberfest,” is your first thought that the beer has no monetary cost, or that the beer is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? Now someone tells you, “There’s free speech at Oktoberfest.” Is your first thought that there’s no monetary cost to expression, or that the expression is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? (Happily, Oktoberfest has both.) Think of them as the _slightly_ longer "Free as in 'free beer' " and "Free as in 'free speech' ". When beer is described as “free,” it’s understood to be gratis. When speech is described as free, it’s understood to be libre. These are used as examples for more ambiguous situations, since software can be one, the other, both, or neither.
    - ptspts 4y ago
      How do I get free beer at Oktoberfest?
      - apetresc 4y ago
        You don't, but the point is that if there was "free beer" at Oktoberfest the meaning would be unambiguous.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      what is free software?
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      pssst - there are two different words in German for these concepts
  - eddd-ddde 4y ago
    Free as in beer, as when one refers to 'free beer' it's one that you don't pay for. When one says 'free speech' it's one that allows you to do what you want. Former is gratis, latter is libre.
  - rgoulter 4y ago
    > Beer is normally neither monetarily free TBH the main place I've seen the phrase "free beer" is a Simpson's joke: people stand in front of a sign saying "free beer", but after Homer drinks many cups, the sign is revealed in full to say "alcohol-free beer, $5/cup". It's understood that beer normally costs money, so the setup of the joke is that "free beer" is understood without explanation as "beer without costing money".
    - shadowofneptune 4y ago
      Beer was once given away at taverns so people would stick around for the food, which had a price adjusted to make up for the beer. Freeware uses this model.
      - jcpst 4y ago
        This also works in the inverse. The kimmelweck sandwich has its orgins in the pubs of western New York. Some gave the sandwich for free, and it was so salty that incentive was created for adding some pints to the tab.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    The culture reference is to commercial goods (like beer) being given away at zero cost as a promotion. (“Beer” is probably not the best example but is conveniently terse; for Boomers, “toasters”—in reference to bank promotions—might be more culturally relevant, for younger generations “-to-play” in reference to F2P games might be, but neither rolls off the tongue as well.)
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Probably you're overthinking it... "free as in speech, not beer": "free speech", the right to say what you want without legal restrictions from the state "free beer", beer you don't need to pay for Nothing to do with beer making you "feel free" (?) or whatever Then again, free speech is not about being able to modify speech, release your own version of another's speech, and so on (e.g. the US has "free speech" but MLK's dream speech is still copyrighted). Perhaps a better slogan would be: "Free as in free sex, not beer" And if the slogan wasn't meant for corporations too, and wasn't coined in the puritan 80s/90s, it might have been...
    - forgotloginonp4 4y ago
      Maybe something more comprehendable would be “free as in Postfix, not Gmail” in that anyone can freely implement an MTA or use existing FOSS, which is different from using for free Gmail, Facebook, first 3 months of AOL, first 10 albums from Columbia House, … https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-columbia-house-made-money-giving-away-music https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-colu...
- goodpoint 4y ago
  "free software" is still misleading and "free as in speech" is hardly accurate. They both fail to convey what it's really about.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- iib 4y ago
  I have never understood why it was not called "Liberty Software" since the beginning. The confusion disappears, liberty exists in English as a sibling to "libre" from Spanish and French and everybody in the United States, where the term originally comes from, and the rest of the English-speaking world understands what it means. As for the grammar argument, you can--sort of--force `Liberty` to be an adjective (think "Liberty City").
  - darksaints 4y ago
    IMO, Liberty Software sounds like a company or a brand, but free/libre are philosophical concepts. I think it's important that free/libre software be noted for it's philosophy, not it's affiliation to a specific organization.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  I'm not so sure about that; I've certainly met plenty of people who did not understand it. HN is not representative of the wider tech community. And "free as in speech, not beer" actually does little to clarify it IMHO; it only works well if you're already familiar with the concept, but if you're not it only adds to the confusion (free speech is about the freedom to say what you want, so free software is about being able to write whatever software you want?) Now, "free software as in right to repair" would actually clarify it, but trying to get an understandable message out seems to be "unethical" so meh :-/
  - atonse 4y ago
    There are probably even fewer people that know what right to repair is. Free software just isn’t enough anymore because the licenses limit your freedom too. (and even my choice of the word “limit” here will be controversial between the Apache/MIT and the *GPL crowds). Don’t have an easy answer :-)
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles it's fairly well known. And while there are undoubtable many people who don't know what it means, the basic idea is quite obvious from just those three words: "if I bought something, I should have the ability to repair it". The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catch on with the hard-core FSF crowd who seem to think that the only possible step is one giant leap to a Free Software utopia and than any smaller step in that direction is "unethical".
      - cmurf 4y ago
        Do many/most people really think they should have the ability to repair it? I'm not sure because they keep buying products where it's expressly not possible to repair it yourself or by a competent 3rd party. So I'm not really sure it has any more meaning than free software means no cost rather than "no one and everyone owns the software".
- worik 4y ago
  > The term [Free Software] has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. For you and me, maybe. But no, Free Software is often misunderstood. I had to explain the difference on a group dedicated to Linux the other day. It is worth pointing out, every time.
dancemethis 4y ago
You'd need to be working at Discord or something to not know that Free Software is a thing.
bastardoperator 4y ago
GNU is pretty clear: To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
- dahart 4y ago
  It might seem clear to those of us who’ve heard the whole story, but free speech isn’t a great analogy at all, which means this will always require a lengthy explanation to someone new to the concept. Free speech is a constitutionally protected right in the US (and something else in other countries) that comes with a list of limitations and exceptions, while “free software” is not in general a legally protected right, and in GNU’s implementation requires a viral license that eliminates some kinds of freedom, e.g., it’s specifically and explicitly not public domain. It’s fine to clarify that “free” doesn’t mean money in this case, but that’s hardly a clear explanation of what it does mean.
joshcryer 4y ago
Maybe but "free" should be related to "freedom" more than "not having money." "You're free to use the park," "you're free to use the library." We need more freedom in that sense.
Halan 4y ago
Maybe for Americans who cannot see further then their noses or that don’t speak any other language
- mistrial9 4y ago
  American companies funded by leveraged debt are specifically, exactly paying that money in large amounts to remove any GPL'ish things in their stack. Some other hardware companies are simply failing to comply by the license - catch me if you can, I guess. If so much money is available as "someone else's money" and there is some vague notion that ownership complete is the mission of profit-seeking .. then why not? but what does that do to the value of the work, and the value of the ecosystem, built as GPL? GCC is an engineering marvel, and the basis of two generations of engineering by hundreds of people and companies. Rust joining one of the many languages supported by GCC and stack, is welcome here.
adastra22 4y ago
"Libre" is not a word in the English language. Pretty sure that's not going to be clearer.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  feature not a bug? asking a question is the first step to a new understanding
  - adastra22 4y ago
    You’re assuming genuine curiosity which probably isn’t there.

maxwell86 4y ago

The rust compiler can already use GCC as a backend. So I don't see how this opens more platforms than that.

dleslie 4y ago
Because that doesn't use the GCC frontend interface, requiring build tools and embedded toolchains to be modified to understand the rust compiler interface. By using GCC it's just another language that the existing toolchain can understand.
- maxwell86 4y ago
  The Rust module system is radically different from C and C++ and other similar languages in the embedded space. Every build system that has added support for Rust, which aren't many, had to be radically modified to achieve that. None of these supports the GCC Rust frontend, but all of them support the Rust frontend. So if you actually wanted to build any >100 LOC Rust project for embedded targets not supported by LLVM, doing it with the Rust frontend is as easy as just running 1 CLI command to pick its GCC backend. Doing it with the GCC frontend, would require you to either port one of the build systems to support it, or... give the GCC frontend a CLI API that's 100% compatible with the Rust frontend.
  - dleslie 4y ago
    Cargo support for gccrs is part of this project: https://github.com/Rust-GCC/cargo-gccrs https://github.com/Rust-GCC/cargo-gccrs Moreover, modules are less interesting to me in embedded development, for which I'm interested in access to Rust's borrow checker for gaining certainty of small portions of larger projects, which are written in other languages.
- nickitolas 4y ago
  So it's not about platform support, but about toolchain integration? Who benefits from that, projects using C/C++ who want to use a rust library? Or is it about distro package maintainers?