7 ms·

If LLVM is so bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with? You shall know a tree by it's fruits. It wouldn't bother me one way or another whe

by hacknat 13y ago

If LLVM is so bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with? You shall know a tree by it's fruits. It wouldn't bother me one way or another whether LLVM was copyleft or not, the people who run it are more pleasant to work with. I think the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others. Nobody wants to work with a curmudgeon.

deleted 13y ago
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streptomycin 13y ago
If LLVM is so bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with? Who said it was bad? People have said it is not copyleft. I think the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others. Nobody wants to work with a curmudgeon. I think that's ridiculous. Do you really think corporate backers of LLVM would just ignore their economic incentives for a non-copyleft compiler if RMS was friendlier?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Who said it was bad? RMS. > People have said it is not copyleft. RMS says that it is bad because it is not copyleft. Specifically, he says "The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers". Do you not think that "terrible setback for our community" is a subset of "bad"?
  - streptomycin 13y ago
    I interpreted "bad" in his post to mean "technologically bad" not "morally bad". On second thought, I might have misinterpreted his post. In that case, then the obvious answer to "If LLVM is so (morally) bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with?" is that niceness and political ideology are only very loosely correlated, at best. The other part of my comment still stands, though (I think).
  - mverwijs 13y ago
    The license is bad, not the software. > If LLVM is so bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with? How is the license being bad influenced by, or of influence on, the attitude of the developers? Are you saying that surely the license can't be that bad, since the software is written by nice folks?
philh 13y ago
I don't think anyone said LLVM is technically bad; and there's no particular reason that pleasant people with good intentions can't be bad for a community that they don't explicitly identify with.
Someone 13y ago
I think the FSF would argue that desperate cases require desperate remedies. You shouldn't expect your army to behave nicely at all times, even while defending your freedom. RMS isn't disrespecting others, he just has been at war so long that he isn't aware of their sensitivities.
- burntsushi 13y ago
  What desperate cases?
  - Someone 13y ago
    The fight for users to be able to change their software, for example to add a 'print is done' feedback message to the software driving the print queue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Background:_events_leading_to_GNU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Background:_ev...)
    - burntsushi 13y ago
      I'm not convinced we're in desperate times. There are several significant open source communities built on copyfree licenses that flourish.
jjoonathan 13y ago
> If LLVM is so bad RMS doesn't have a problem with LLVM because it's bad, he has a problem with it because it's good. > the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others No, the biggest hurdles to people caring about copyleft are by far the incompatibilities with accepted practices and existing software that make it a lot of work to comply with copyleft ideals. RMS's tone never seemed disrespectful to me. Uncompromising and occasionally blunt, yes, but never disrespectful. What would you have had him do differently? Compromise his ideals? Spin out a comforting but insincere apology that focused on licensing technicalities rather than the underlying philosophical issues?
- quenlinlom 13y ago
  The problem with RMS is that he always assumes people to agree with his way of thinking. His uncompromising tone is also a big problem. I know, programmers are supposed to be emotionless meritocratic robots, but this Old Boys Know Best attitude is precisely why RMS and GCC is losing user share so quickly these days: the extremist meritocracy of programming culture is actually highly male-centric, and it simply scares off all women and any men who are not sexists. This is why LLVM is gaining so much support these days: it's technically superior, and its development community isn't sexist.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - tptacek 13y ago
    This isn't a problem with RMS. It's a fact of RMS, and such a well known fact that it practically defines him. People working on FSF projects tend to understand that. If you actually read what RMS just wrote, or, for that matter, anything RMS has written in the last decade on similar subjects, it's clear that "losing user share" isn't a meaningful metric to the FSF. If you lose user share by strengthening non-free software, then there was no point to the FSF to begin with. By starting your comment with "the problem with RMS", you might as well be pointing out "the problem with free software". Which, fair enough, but it's not like people didn't realize that non-free software could edge out free software on functionality or user-friendliness.
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Xurinos 13y ago
> You shall know a tree by it's fruits. Don't judge a book by its cover. Follow the money. A witty saying proves nothing.
skywhopper 13y ago
Does RMS go trolling on dev lists for permissively-licensed projects? The FSF has been around for decades with the same goal. ESR comes in and starts needling over the philosophy behind the GPL on dev lists. Who's showing disrespect to whom again?
- nzp 13y ago
  > Does RMS go trolling on dev lists for permissively-licensed projects? Actually, he does. I remember when he went to an OpenBSD list a few years ago[1] and insisted they take out ports for non-free software out of the ports tree. [1]: Too lazy to find the link.
- microtherion 13y ago
  > Does RMS go trolling on dev lists for permissively-licensed projects? Are bears catholic? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.tcl/7JXGt-Uxqag%5B1-25-false%5D https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.tcl/7JXGt-...

by hacknat 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

streptomycin 13y ago

If LLVM is so bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with? Who said it was bad? People have said it is not copyleft. I think the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others. Nobody wants to work with a curmudgeon. I think that's ridiculous. Do you really think corporate backers of LLVM would just ignore their economic incentives for a non-copyleft compiler if RMS was friendlier?

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Who said it was bad? RMS. > People have said it is not copyleft. RMS says that it is bad because it is not copyleft. Specifically, he says "The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers". Do you not think that "terrible setback for our community" is a subset of "bad"?
- streptomycin 13y ago
  I interpreted "bad" in his post to mean "technologically bad" not "morally bad". On second thought, I might have misinterpreted his post. In that case, then the obvious answer to "If LLVM is so (morally) bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with?" is that niceness and political ideology are only very loosely correlated, at best. The other part of my comment still stands, though (I think).
- mverwijs 13y ago
  The license is bad, not the software. > If LLVM is so bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with? How is the license being bad influenced by, or of influence on, the attitude of the developers? Are you saying that surely the license can't be that bad, since the software is written by nice folks?

philh 13y ago

I don't think anyone said LLVM is technically bad; and there's no particular reason that pleasant people with good intentions can't be bad for a community that they don't explicitly identify with.

Someone 13y ago

I think the FSF would argue that desperate cases require desperate remedies. You shouldn't expect your army to behave nicely at all times, even while defending your freedom. RMS isn't disrespecting others, he just has been at war so long that he isn't aware of their sensitivities.

burntsushi 13y ago
What desperate cases?
- Someone 13y ago
  The fight for users to be able to change their software, for example to add a 'print is done' feedback message to the software driving the print queue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Background:_events_leading_to_GNU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Background:_ev...)
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    I'm not convinced we're in desperate times. There are several significant open source communities built on copyfree licenses that flourish.

jjoonathan 13y ago

> If LLVM is so bad RMS doesn't have a problem with LLVM because it's bad, he has a problem with it because it's good. > the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others No, the biggest hurdles to people caring about copyleft are by far the incompatibilities with accepted practices and existing software that make it a lot of work to comply with copyleft ideals. RMS's tone never seemed disrespectful to me. Uncompromising and occasionally blunt, yes, but never disrespectful. What would you have had him do differently? Compromise his ideals? Spin out a comforting but insincere apology that focused on licensing technicalities rather than the underlying philosophical issues?

quenlinlom 13y ago
The problem with RMS is that he always assumes people to agree with his way of thinking. His uncompromising tone is also a big problem. I know, programmers are supposed to be emotionless meritocratic robots, but this Old Boys Know Best attitude is precisely why RMS and GCC is losing user share so quickly these days: the extremist meritocracy of programming culture is actually highly male-centric, and it simply scares off all women and any men who are not sexists. This is why LLVM is gaining so much support these days: it's technically superior, and its development community isn't sexist.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 13y ago
  This isn't a problem with RMS. It's a fact of RMS, and such a well known fact that it practically defines him. People working on FSF projects tend to understand that. If you actually read what RMS just wrote, or, for that matter, anything RMS has written in the last decade on similar subjects, it's clear that "losing user share" isn't a meaningful metric to the FSF. If you lose user share by strengthening non-free software, then there was no point to the FSF to begin with. By starting your comment with "the problem with RMS", you might as well be pointing out "the problem with free software". Which, fair enough, but it's not like people didn't realize that non-free software could edge out free software on functionality or user-friendliness.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Xurinos 13y ago

> You shall know a tree by it's fruits. Don't judge a book by its cover. Follow the money. A witty saying proves nothing.

skywhopper 13y ago

Does RMS go trolling on dev lists for permissively-licensed projects? The FSF has been around for decades with the same goal. ESR comes in and starts needling over the philosophy behind the GPL on dev lists. Who's showing disrespect to whom again?

nzp 13y ago
> Does RMS go trolling on dev lists for permissively-licensed projects? Actually, he does. I remember when he went to an OpenBSD list a few years ago[1] and insisted they take out ports for non-free software out of the ports tree. [1]: Too lazy to find the link.
microtherion 13y ago
> Does RMS go trolling on dev lists for permissively-licensed projects? Are bears catholic? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.tcl/7JXGt-Uxqag%5B1-25-false%5D https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.tcl/7JXGt-...