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I could be wrong, but it really seems to me that this is a very good, but somewhat indirect example of Apple's positive influence in the software world. By rely
by leoh 13y ago
I could be wrong, but it really seems to me that this is a very good, but somewhat indirect example of Apple's positive influence in the software world. By relying so heavily on LLVM it seems that they helped push LLVM to more robust maturity. Not something a lot of people talk about when they talk about LLVM ;p.
- Sephiroth87 13y agoThis so many times
- icebraining 13y agoSame happened with Webkit and CUPS. Of course, Webkit came from KHTML, which is GPL licensed, so it's not like they had a choice if they wanted to use it.
- danieldk 13y agoCUPS was already great and widely used in Unices before Apple bought it.
- diminish 13y agoLove - i.e. precursor to affirmative thought - is the maker of everything. It can make Apple the greatest open source contributor, FreeBSD the best Unix and iOS a hero of open source - only because of Webkit-. Just keep loving and imagining, then Android becomes an open source enemy, Gnu and GCC the restrictive alternatives, Firefox a small open source dwarf and FSF the epicenter of the axis of evil. PS: Read all the threads here, and check a few dozens of similar Phoronix articles for-ad-clicks on the same topic on HN.
- patrickaljord 13y agoKHTML was LGPL like all kdelibs, not GPL.
- bad_user 13y agoIf it were GPL (without an explicit exception), they wouldn't have been able to embed it in Safari, without distributing Safari under GPL or something compatible with GPL. KHTML was also pretty sweet already, before WebKit was born, but it lacked the polish ... e.g. web pages weren't rendering properly because KHTML was adhering to standards, whereas Mozilla was adding IExplorer features to make web pages look nice (remember, this was back when "works best in IExplorer" was still the norm). Fortunately for all of us, Mozilla decided against implementing ActiveX (it's a pity that people don't remember these things when speaking of PNaCl or Dart). Unfortunately, WebKit has become in a lot of ways the new IExplorer on mobiles (at least this time it's driven by standards and it's open-source). I hope Mozilla can bring some balance.
- pjmlp 13y ago> Unfortunately, WebKit has become in a lot of ways the new IExplorer on mobiles (at least this time it's driven by standards and it's open-source). Except this is talk about standards and open-source is rubbish, because each mobile device has a different version of Webkit and users only have the version that came with the device.
- gmrple 13y agoI don't really think you can say that. It's not because they did something particularly positive, but more because they did something negative that had positive side effects. A positive externality maybe?
- epistasis 13y agoWhat was the negative thing that had LLVM as a side effect?
- D9u 13y agoI agree that Apple has helped to promote LLVM/CLANG, but I'd rather give the credit to the Unix community as a whole.
- eruditely 13y agoActually I think this point is repeated every time.
- davexunit 13y agoCommence the HN Apple circlejerk once again.
- DannyBee 13y agoThis is a very interesting perspective on LLVM. I don't believe Apple has the most contributors (IE compared to the community as a whole), and i don't think they ever did. They also haven't pushed it as much as you'd think. For example, Apple had precisely nothing to do with Linux or FreeBSD support for LLVM. Now, you could definitely make your statement about clang, but not LLVM itself. Apple deserves a lot of credit for pushing clang forward. On the LLVM side, however, since about 2 years ago, Google has probably has as much impact on LLVM as Apple, and you hear nothing about this, because they don't hold external developer conferences talking about it. (You can count the number of Google presos at recent developer meetings if you want a good indication of how involved they are). Now, of course, in reality, the credit should go to the people doing the work, regardless of where they work, but HN and other places always like to set up these things up as if they are really corporate projects.
- jyap 13y agoUh, quite false in your statements and assumptions. Do you know that Chris Lattner has worked for Apple since 2005? Chris Lattner being the "primary author of the LLVM project".
- DannyBee 13y agoYou are going to have to do better than that. I've known Chris Lattner a very very long time (since before he worked at Apple), and have counseled the LLVM project on various issues since then. I was also involved in mediating the proposals to merge LLVM and GCC that came up, and I watched Chris sell Apple folks on LLVM and get hired. Chris is not a primary author any more, he is a director at Apple. Most of LLVM was not written at Apple, it was written at UIUC (LLVM was started in 2000). While large parts have been rewritten since then, it would be absolutely positively incorrect to say it was Apple's project. I don't even think Apple was the first company to hire people to work on it! Note that Chris doesn't really code much anymore (and hasn't for at least 2 years), given that he has too many people to manage. So, now, if you'd like to point out what statements you think i made are incorrect and your supporting data, i'd love to hear it.
- tedunangst 13y ago