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In the mean-time, the community will be wasting time and effort in trying to solve ARM 64-bit issues which Apple has already solved. If LLVM were under a copyl

by yapcguy 13y ago

In the mean-time, the community will be wasting time and effort in trying to solve ARM 64-bit issues which Apple has already solved. If LLVM were under a copyleft license like the GPL, Apple could still have created it's backend in secret to time its release with the new iPhone. BSD style licenses leave the community at the mercy of corporate interests. If Apple decides not to release[1] its backend, too bad, and we all play catch-up. [1] "We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." Steve Jobs

klodolph 13y ago
We already have a copyleft compiler, GCC, and under the stewardship of the FSF it has turned into a total mess. The community has been wasting effort for years duplicating issues that have already been solved in GCC because the FSF refused to merge patches that would make it modular. On the other hand, you can download Clang and make your own tools from it now. Go ahead, I dare you to do either of the following: * Use GCC's C frontend to write a code analysis tool of any sort, * Write a new frontend to GCC. FSF's damage to the GCC code base proved that you can still sabotage freedom while adhering to the letter of a copyleft license. I suspect the KHTML mess is still fresh in the minds of many engineers at Apple.
- LukeShu 13y ago
  Since 1999, GCC has been under the stewardship of the GCC steering committee[1], not the FSF. [1]: http://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html http://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html
eridius 13y ago
> If LLVM were under a copyleft license like the GPL, ... You say that as if making such a dramatic license change would affect nothing else besides the rate at which changes made by companies get released to the wild. That's preposterous. If LLVM were GPL'd then Apple would not be using it. Full stop.
- __david__ 13y ago
  > If LLVM were GPL'd then Apple would not be using it. Full stop. Incorrect. Apple was perfectly happy using the GPLv2 based gcc for years and years and years. The thing that made them strike out and look for something new was the GPLv3 [1]. If LLVM were GPLv2 Apple would have no reason not to use it. Incidentally, does anyone know which part of the GPLv3 they don't like? Is it the patent clause or the Tivoization clause? My personal feeling is it must be the patent clause since none of the interesting GPL stuff (bash, Emacs, or the unix command line stuff) even ships on iOS. [1] Also the same reason they're stuck shipping the 5 year old version of Emacs (22.1) and Bash (3.2) in their current release.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    > Incorrect. Apple was perfectly happy using the GPLv2 based gcc for years and years and years. Not really, Steve Jobs always disliked it, because FSF forced them to open source Objective-C when NeXT used gcc as their backed. http://www.anonymous-insider.net/free-software/research/1989/0919.html http://www.anonymous-insider.net/free-software/research/1989...
    - kps 13y ago
      Not to mention the 1989–1995 FSF boycott of Apple.
  - eridius 13y ago
    If LLVM were GPLv2 Apple would not have had any incentive to move to it over continuing their efforts with the fork of GCC 4.2.
mikeash 13y ago
The whole reason Apple started heavily backing LLVM and built clang is because of gcc's license. Do not think for a moment that LLVM being GPLd means Apple would be releasing this code now. Instead, it means Apple would never release this code, because it would be part of some internal compiler project they probably would not feel like making open source at all. At this point, LLVM and clang largely are Apple. This complaining about the timeline of the open source release of their own work is a bit nuts.
jlarocco 13y ago
Well feel free to release your compiler under whichever license you want. The LLVM people released theirs under a BSD style license precisely so that people and companies could do things like this If "the community" wastes their time solving ARM 64-bit problems it's their own fault for not waiting for Apple's code.
ksec 13y ago
"In the mean-time, the community will be wasting time and effort in trying to solve ARM 64-bit issues which Apple has already solved." Yep, Release them as early as possible so Samsung could copy and sit there does nothing? And Solving 64bit issues of what? The whole thing surprise the industry because Absolutely NO one was expecting an ARMv8 64bit chip on market until late 2014! [1] Apple try to open it as standard, and they got sued by Patents Trolls. And are still battling it in court.

by yapcguy 13y ago

klodolph 13y ago

We already have a copyleft compiler, GCC, and under the stewardship of the FSF it has turned into a total mess. The community has been wasting effort for years duplicating issues that have already been solved in GCC because the FSF refused to merge patches that would make it modular. On the other hand, you can download Clang and make your own tools from it now. Go ahead, I dare you to do either of the following: * Use GCC's C frontend to write a code analysis tool of any sort, * Write a new frontend to GCC. FSF's damage to the GCC code base proved that you can still sabotage freedom while adhering to the letter of a copyleft license. I suspect the KHTML mess is still fresh in the minds of many engineers at Apple.

LukeShu 13y ago
Since 1999, GCC has been under the stewardship of the GCC steering committee[1], not the FSF. [1]: http://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html http://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html

eridius 13y ago

> If LLVM were under a copyleft license like the GPL, ... You say that as if making such a dramatic license change would affect nothing else besides the rate at which changes made by companies get released to the wild. That's preposterous. If LLVM were GPL'd then Apple would not be using it. Full stop.

__david__ 13y ago
> If LLVM were GPL'd then Apple would not be using it. Full stop. Incorrect. Apple was perfectly happy using the GPLv2 based gcc for years and years and years. The thing that made them strike out and look for something new was the GPLv3 [1]. If LLVM were GPLv2 Apple would have no reason not to use it. Incidentally, does anyone know which part of the GPLv3 they don't like? Is it the patent clause or the Tivoization clause? My personal feeling is it must be the patent clause since none of the interesting GPL stuff (bash, Emacs, or the unix command line stuff) even ships on iOS. [1] Also the same reason they're stuck shipping the 5 year old version of Emacs (22.1) and Bash (3.2) in their current release.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  > Incorrect. Apple was perfectly happy using the GPLv2 based gcc for years and years and years. Not really, Steve Jobs always disliked it, because FSF forced them to open source Objective-C when NeXT used gcc as their backed. http://www.anonymous-insider.net/free-software/research/1989/0919.html http://www.anonymous-insider.net/free-software/research/1989...
  - kps 13y ago
    Not to mention the 1989–1995 FSF boycott of Apple.
- eridius 13y ago
  If LLVM were GPLv2 Apple would not have had any incentive to move to it over continuing their efforts with the fork of GCC 4.2.

mikeash 13y ago

The whole reason Apple started heavily backing LLVM and built clang is because of gcc's license. Do not think for a moment that LLVM being GPLd means Apple would be releasing this code now. Instead, it means Apple would never release this code, because it would be part of some internal compiler project they probably would not feel like making open source at all. At this point, LLVM and clang largely are Apple. This complaining about the timeline of the open source release of their own work is a bit nuts.

jlarocco 13y ago

Well feel free to release your compiler under whichever license you want. The LLVM people released theirs under a BSD style license precisely so that people and companies could do things like this If "the community" wastes their time solving ARM 64-bit problems it's their own fault for not waiting for Apple's code.

ksec 13y ago

"In the mean-time, the community will be wasting time and effort in trying to solve ARM 64-bit issues which Apple has already solved." Yep, Release them as early as possible so Samsung could copy and sit there does nothing? And Solving 64bit issues of what? The whole thing surprise the industry because Absolutely NO one was expecting an ARMv8 64bit chip on market until late 2014! [1] Apple try to open it as standard, and they got sued by Patents Trolls. And are still battling it in court.