3 ms·

Not anymore. Modularization is somewhat tangential, but for awhile Stallman did actively oppose rearchitecting GCC to better support non-free plugins and front-

by wahern 10mo ago

Not anymore. Modularization is somewhat tangential, but for awhile Stallman did actively oppose rearchitecting GCC to better support non-free plugins and front-ends. But Stallman lost that battle years ago. AFAIU, the current state of GCC is the result of intentional technical choices (certain kinds of decoupling not as beneficial as people might think--Rust has often been stymied by lack of features in LLVM, i.e. defacto (semantic?) coupling), works in progress (decoupling ongoing), or lack of time or wherewithal to commit to certain major changes (decoupling too onerous).

torginus 10mo ago
Personally, I think when you are making bad technical decisions in service of legal goals (making it harder to circumvent the GPL), that's a sure sign that you made a wrong turn somewhere.
- 1718627440 10mo ago
  Why? When your goal is to have free software, having non-free software with better architecture won't suit you.
  - bigstrat2003 10mo ago
    I would describe this more as "trying to prevent others from having non-free software if they wish to", which is a lot more questionable imo.
    - LeFantome 10mo ago
      Some in the Free Software community do not believe that making it harder to collaborate will reduce the amount of software created. For them, you are going to get the software and the choice is just “free” or not. And they imagine that permissively license code bases get “taken” and so copyleft licenses result in more code for “the community”. I happen to believe that barriers to collaboration results in less software for everybody. I look at Clang and GCC and come away thinking that Clang is the better model because it results in more innovation and more software that I can enjoy. Others wonder why I am so naive and say that collaborating on Clang is only for corporate shills and apologists. You can have whatever opinion you want. I do not care about the politics. I just want more Open Source software. I mean, so do the others guys I imagine but they don’t always seem to fact check their theories. We disagree about which model results in more software I can use.
      - 1718627440 10mo ago
        I am maybe part of the crowd you describe, but I don't disagree so much with you. I just think, that: > I happen to believe that barriers to collaboration results in less software for everybody. is not a bad thing. There is absolutely no lack of supply for software. The "market" is flooded with software and most of it is shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
        LeFantome 10mo ago
        No argument that there is a lot of bad software. I am not as much on the bandwagon for “there is no lack of supply for software”. I think more software is good and the more software there is, the more good software there will be. At least, big picture. I am ok with there being a lot of bad software I do not use just like I am ok with companies building products with Open Source. I just want more software I can use. And, if I create Open Source myself, I just want it to get used.
  - Analemma_ 10mo ago
    This argument has been had thousands of times across thousands of forums and mailing lists in the preceding decades and we're unlikely to settle it here on the N + 1th iteration, but the short version of my own argument is that the entire point of Free Software is to allow end users to modify the software in the ways it serves them best. That's how it got started in the first place (see the origin story about Stallman and the Printer). Stallman's insistence that gcc needed to be deliberately made worse to keep evil things from happening ran completely counter to his own supposed raison d'etre. Which you could maybe defend if it had actually worked, but it didn't: it just made everyone pack up and leave for LLVM instead, which easily could've been predicted and reduced gcc's leverage over the software ecosystem. So it was user-hostile, anti-freedom behavior for no benefit.
    - pessimizer 10mo ago
      I have no idea what you think "gcc's leverage" would be if it were a useless GPL'd core whose only actively updated front and back ends are proprietary. Turning gcc into Android would be no victory for software freedom.
    - 1718627440 10mo ago
      > the entire point of Free Software is to allow end users to modify the software in the ways it serves them best Yes? > completely counter to his own supposed raison d'etre I can't follow your argument. You said yourself, that his point is the freedom of the *end user*, not the compiler vendor. He has no leverage on the random middle man between him and the end user other than adjusting his release conditions (aka. license).
      - Analemma_ 10mo ago
        I'm speaking here as an end user of gcc, who might want e.g. to make a nice code formatting plugin which has to parse the AST to work properly. For a long time, Stallman's demand was that gcc's codebase be as difficult, impenetrable, and non-modular as possible, to prevent companies from bolting a closed-source frontend to the backend, and he specifically opposed exporting the AST, which makes a whole bunch of useful programming tools difficult or impossible. Whatever his motivations were, I don't see a practical difference between "making the code deliberately bad to prevent a user from modifying it" and something like Tivoization enforced by code signing. Either way, I as a gcc user can't modify the code if I find it unfit for purpose.
- pessimizer 10mo ago
  Yes, the law made a wrong turn when it comes to people controlling the software on the devices they own. Free Software is an ingenious hack which often needs patching to deal with specific cases.

by wahern 10mo ago

torginus 10mo ago

Personally, I think when you are making bad technical decisions in service of legal goals (making it harder to circumvent the GPL), that's a sure sign that you made a wrong turn somewhere.

1718627440 10mo ago
Why? When your goal is to have free software, having non-free software with better architecture won't suit you.
- bigstrat2003 10mo ago
  I would describe this more as "trying to prevent others from having non-free software if they wish to", which is a lot more questionable imo.
  - LeFantome 10mo ago
    Some in the Free Software community do not believe that making it harder to collaborate will reduce the amount of software created. For them, you are going to get the software and the choice is just “free” or not. And they imagine that permissively license code bases get “taken” and so copyleft licenses result in more code for “the community”. I happen to believe that barriers to collaboration results in less software for everybody. I look at Clang and GCC and come away thinking that Clang is the better model because it results in more innovation and more software that I can enjoy. Others wonder why I am so naive and say that collaborating on Clang is only for corporate shills and apologists. You can have whatever opinion you want. I do not care about the politics. I just want more Open Source software. I mean, so do the others guys I imagine but they don’t always seem to fact check their theories. We disagree about which model results in more software I can use.
    - 1718627440 10mo ago
      I am maybe part of the crowd you describe, but I don't disagree so much with you. I just think, that: > I happen to believe that barriers to collaboration results in less software for everybody. is not a bad thing. There is absolutely no lack of supply for software. The "market" is flooded with software and most of it is shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
      - LeFantome 10mo ago
        No argument that there is a lot of bad software. I am not as much on the bandwagon for “there is no lack of supply for software”. I think more software is good and the more software there is, the more good software there will be. At least, big picture. I am ok with there being a lot of bad software I do not use just like I am ok with companies building products with Open Source. I just want more software I can use. And, if I create Open Source myself, I just want it to get used.
- Analemma_ 10mo ago
  This argument has been had thousands of times across thousands of forums and mailing lists in the preceding decades and we're unlikely to settle it here on the N + 1th iteration, but the short version of my own argument is that the entire point of Free Software is to allow end users to modify the software in the ways it serves them best. That's how it got started in the first place (see the origin story about Stallman and the Printer). Stallman's insistence that gcc needed to be deliberately made worse to keep evil things from happening ran completely counter to his own supposed raison d'etre. Which you could maybe defend if it had actually worked, but it didn't: it just made everyone pack up and leave for LLVM instead, which easily could've been predicted and reduced gcc's leverage over the software ecosystem. So it was user-hostile, anti-freedom behavior for no benefit.
  - pessimizer 10mo ago
    I have no idea what you think "gcc's leverage" would be if it were a useless GPL'd core whose only actively updated front and back ends are proprietary. Turning gcc into Android would be no victory for software freedom.
  - 1718627440 10mo ago
    > the entire point of Free Software is to allow end users to modify the software in the ways it serves them best Yes? > completely counter to his own supposed raison d'etre I can't follow your argument. You said yourself, that his point is the freedom of the *end user*, not the compiler vendor. He has no leverage on the random middle man between him and the end user other than adjusting his release conditions (aka. license).
    - Analemma_ 10mo ago
      I'm speaking here as an end user of gcc, who might want e.g. to make a nice code formatting plugin which has to parse the AST to work properly. For a long time, Stallman's demand was that gcc's codebase be as difficult, impenetrable, and non-modular as possible, to prevent companies from bolting a closed-source frontend to the backend, and he specifically opposed exporting the AST, which makes a whole bunch of useful programming tools difficult or impossible. Whatever his motivations were, I don't see a practical difference between "making the code deliberately bad to prevent a user from modifying it" and something like Tivoization enforced by code signing. Either way, I as a gcc user can't modify the code if I find it unfit for purpose.
pessimizer 10mo ago
Yes, the law made a wrong turn when it comes to people controlling the software on the devices they own. Free Software is an ingenious hack which often needs patching to deal with specific cases.