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I am a strong supporter of the GPL and its relatives, and of copyleft free software in general. Clang is going to replace the GCC in time because of the superio

I am a strong supporter of the GPL and its relatives, and of copyleft free software in general. Clang is going to replace the GCC in time because of the superiority of its design, and I think it's a shame it's not under the GPL. But I think RMS is wrong here. I would never initiate a free project under a license that isn't strictly copyleft, but I also would never intentionally limit the usefulness and expressiveness of a program I created because that output could be useful for non-free software. If he doesn't want the GCC to be useful for non-free software, why is there language preventing compilation from falling under the linking clause of the GPL? Maybe I just don't have a strong enough understanding of the context here. That said, this "open letter" is quite absurd! Not even getting into the really dubious substance of it: why such hostility? why such trumpeting? why not respond on the mailing list?

ForHackernews 12y ago
> I think it's a shame it's not under the GPL. If Clang is under a permissive non-copyleft license, can't you just fork/relicense it under the GPL? And then build improvements on the GPL version? It's not very nice or sporting, but counterintuitively, it would help demonstrate why copyleft is important.
- profquail 12y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand - you can't simply re-license the existing code, because the copyright does not belong to you. You could add your own GPL-licensed improvements to the code though, in which case consumers would need to abide by the terms of the GPL (because they're consuming both the original BSD-licensed code and your GPL-licensed code).
  - zanny 12y ago
    It is MIT based, which is GPL compatible, so yeah, you can make GPL only changes in your own Clang fork and if anyone uses your changes in their own Clang fork regardless of what all the other code is licensed under they are now beholden to the GPL. Which is why I really don't get the doom and gloom around GCC here. Architecturally LLVM makes huge sense. If you are a free software advocate it makes all the sense in the world as well to continue developing GCC until such a time where the technical merits of LLVM are too great to ignore. And then you just release GNULVM as a fork of LLVM under the GPL and continue on your merry way. Merge in all the good stuff from GCC and upstream patches from LLVM into your working tree and get the best of both worlds, because as long as new contributions are GPL you are not enabling the deprivation of user freedoms.
    - eropple 12y ago
      > If you are a free software advocate it makes all the sense in the world as well to continue developing GCC until such a time where the technical merits of LLVM are too great to ignore. Unspoken is that there's not a ton of people ideologically devoted to RMSfree software these days. LLVM being usable by anyone is not sufficiently different for the current contributors and, I daresay, an overwhelming majority of folks who'd have a passing notion to work on such a project. One could choose to learn to be an effective LLVM developer, taking what that community will give, and then just not contribute back to the community in much the same way as the GNU folks sneer about proprietary code, but I think the intersection between people who are interested enough in LLVM to work on it and the people so objectionable as to try such a scheme is small. (But I am an optimist.)
- ralmidani 12y ago
  Why is it "not very nice" to GPL a fork of a BSD-licensed project? If an author believes in their permissive license, they shouldn't complain about how their code is used. Edit: fixed a typo.
  - xenophonf 12y ago
    Because the authors may intend to permit their code to be combined into some proprietary code base (which is to say that their idea of what constitutes permissiveness differs from yours).
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      The thrust of the question is why it's reasonable for them to not consider a GPL project either another instance of "some proprietary code base" or something better. I think there are two answers. One is potentially ratios of old code to new code. But I think a bigger one is the threat to take "the community" with the code. Forks typically involve drama.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      Isn't the intent of the BSD license specifically to refrain from dictating what licenses downstream users may add to their derived works? If you're okay with a downstream user making a fully "all rights reserved" proprietary product incorporating your code, I don't see how you could be against that same downstream user open-sourcing the resulting product under the GPL. In what sense would it be more free for them to keep it fully proprietary and not release it under the GPL? I can see an argument that BSD-licensing any derived works so they can go back to the original project under the original license is the friendly thing to do. But then you would frown at both GPL and proprietary downstream licensees, since neither one is doing the friendly thing (in this definition of "friendly") and BSD-licensing their contributions.
      - logn 12y ago
        While I agree with you, one could argue that developers of BSD works are ok with proprietary use but would rather not see an open source fork that divides the community. And the fork would not be available to them for further proprietary commercial use.
- xenophonf 12y ago
  Relicensing code requires ownership of the code in question or some form of legal delegation. For example VLC relicensed something - I forget exactly what, maybe a core library - and the guy in charge had to track down every single person who contributed non-trivial amounts of code and obtain their permission to alter the license. To do what you propose would effectively require rewriting Clang from scratch, but even then it might be considered a derivative work and thus beholden to the original copyright holders in some way. (I'm not a lawyer so I'm a little hazy on the specifics.) Or at the very least, you'd have to write enough new or improved code that convinces people to use your fork of Clang, your part of which would be under GPL and so obligate distributors of your fork accordingly.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Licensing a derived work under a more restrictive license in a way that is compatible with the previous licenses does not require ownership of the code. My recollection has it that the VLC case was going from GPL to something permissive. Going from permissive (and "GPL compatible") to GPL is easier.
- nly 12y ago
  You could fork Clang/LLVM and integrate your own GPL licensed code, but the existing code would remain MIT/BSD and you cannot change that. Practically speaking it would boil down to whether you could separate what existed previously and what a court thought constituted a derived work.
msabalau 12y ago
The mind reels at the thought that anyone could have led such a charmed life that they would characterise this as "such hostility"
azakai 12y ago
> why such hostility? why such trumpeting? why not respond on the mailing list? I saw no hostility, and I'm not sure what you mean by "trumpeting"? I don't know who the author is, but they felt like writing a blog post, and they did. People do that all the time. Regarding the mailing list, typically one posts to a mailing list with a direct response to a previous message. If someone has a more general thought, that isn't a direct response to a concrete previous message, the mailing list might well not be the natural place to post it. Overall the view being expressed in the blog is very reasonable, mainstream, and well-posed. It reflects reality - that LLVM is being used for all AST-export purposes these days. That's the world we live in now, for better or for worse.
mehrzad 12y ago
>why such hostility I really hope you didn't say that just because it appears the author is female, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt. The blogpost was not hostile at all.
- xtrumanx 12y ago
  Why did you feel the need to mention your suspicion of misogyny? Did the OP present any reason for you to believe he felt that way due to his comment? Your comment sounds akin to the old political tactic of asking your political opponent if he stopped beating his wife.
- tatterdemalion 12y ago
  I am not a man.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    I don't think that's a very useful point, here. Stereotypes leave plenty of room for women wanting to cut each other down. FWIW, I also read hostility in the original post, and don't expect that was influenced tremendously by the apparent gender of the author in my case or yours.
dllthomas 12y ago
"If he doesn't want the GCC to be useful for non-free software, why ifs there language preventing compilation from falling under the linking clause of the GPL?" I think one can sensibly draw a distinction between "I don't want to adapt the software in ways that will serve that purpose" and "I want men with guns to limit Freedom 0".

ForHackernews 12y ago

> I think it's a shame it's not under the GPL. If Clang is under a permissive non-copyleft license, can't you just fork/relicense it under the GPL? And then build improvements on the GPL version? It's not very nice or sporting, but counterintuitively, it would help demonstrate why copyleft is important.

profquail 12y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand - you can't simply re-license the existing code, because the copyright does not belong to you. You could add your own GPL-licensed improvements to the code though, in which case consumers would need to abide by the terms of the GPL (because they're consuming both the original BSD-licensed code and your GPL-licensed code).
- zanny 12y ago
  It is MIT based, which is GPL compatible, so yeah, you can make GPL only changes in your own Clang fork and if anyone uses your changes in their own Clang fork regardless of what all the other code is licensed under they are now beholden to the GPL. Which is why I really don't get the doom and gloom around GCC here. Architecturally LLVM makes huge sense. If you are a free software advocate it makes all the sense in the world as well to continue developing GCC until such a time where the technical merits of LLVM are too great to ignore. And then you just release GNULVM as a fork of LLVM under the GPL and continue on your merry way. Merge in all the good stuff from GCC and upstream patches from LLVM into your working tree and get the best of both worlds, because as long as new contributions are GPL you are not enabling the deprivation of user freedoms.
  - eropple 12y ago
    > If you are a free software advocate it makes all the sense in the world as well to continue developing GCC until such a time where the technical merits of LLVM are too great to ignore. Unspoken is that there's not a ton of people ideologically devoted to RMSfree software these days. LLVM being usable by anyone is not sufficiently different for the current contributors and, I daresay, an overwhelming majority of folks who'd have a passing notion to work on such a project. One could choose to learn to be an effective LLVM developer, taking what that community will give, and then just not contribute back to the community in much the same way as the GNU folks sneer about proprietary code, but I think the intersection between people who are interested enough in LLVM to work on it and the people so objectionable as to try such a scheme is small. (But I am an optimist.)
ralmidani 12y ago
Why is it "not very nice" to GPL a fork of a BSD-licensed project? If an author believes in their permissive license, they shouldn't complain about how their code is used. Edit: fixed a typo.
- xenophonf 12y ago
  Because the authors may intend to permit their code to be combined into some proprietary code base (which is to say that their idea of what constitutes permissiveness differs from yours).
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    The thrust of the question is why it's reasonable for them to not consider a GPL project either another instance of "some proprietary code base" or something better. I think there are two answers. One is potentially ratios of old code to new code. But I think a bigger one is the threat to take "the community" with the code. Forks typically involve drama.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    Isn't the intent of the BSD license specifically to refrain from dictating what licenses downstream users may add to their derived works? If you're okay with a downstream user making a fully "all rights reserved" proprietary product incorporating your code, I don't see how you could be against that same downstream user open-sourcing the resulting product under the GPL. In what sense would it be more free for them to keep it fully proprietary and not release it under the GPL? I can see an argument that BSD-licensing any derived works so they can go back to the original project under the original license is the friendly thing to do. But then you would frown at both GPL and proprietary downstream licensees, since neither one is doing the friendly thing (in this definition of "friendly") and BSD-licensing their contributions.
    - logn 12y ago
      While I agree with you, one could argue that developers of BSD works are ok with proprietary use but would rather not see an open source fork that divides the community. And the fork would not be available to them for further proprietary commercial use.
xenophonf 12y ago
Relicensing code requires ownership of the code in question or some form of legal delegation. For example VLC relicensed something - I forget exactly what, maybe a core library - and the guy in charge had to track down every single person who contributed non-trivial amounts of code and obtain their permission to alter the license. To do what you propose would effectively require rewriting Clang from scratch, but even then it might be considered a derivative work and thus beholden to the original copyright holders in some way. (I'm not a lawyer so I'm a little hazy on the specifics.) Or at the very least, you'd have to write enough new or improved code that convinces people to use your fork of Clang, your part of which would be under GPL and so obligate distributors of your fork accordingly.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  Licensing a derived work under a more restrictive license in a way that is compatible with the previous licenses does not require ownership of the code. My recollection has it that the VLC case was going from GPL to something permissive. Going from permissive (and "GPL compatible") to GPL is easier.
nly 12y ago
You could fork Clang/LLVM and integrate your own GPL licensed code, but the existing code would remain MIT/BSD and you cannot change that. Practically speaking it would boil down to whether you could separate what existed previously and what a court thought constituted a derived work.

msabalau 12y ago

The mind reels at the thought that anyone could have led such a charmed life that they would characterise this as "such hostility"

azakai 12y ago

> why such hostility? why such trumpeting? why not respond on the mailing list? I saw no hostility, and I'm not sure what you mean by "trumpeting"? I don't know who the author is, but they felt like writing a blog post, and they did. People do that all the time. Regarding the mailing list, typically one posts to a mailing list with a direct response to a previous message. If someone has a more general thought, that isn't a direct response to a concrete previous message, the mailing list might well not be the natural place to post it. Overall the view being expressed in the blog is very reasonable, mainstream, and well-posed. It reflects reality - that LLVM is being used for all AST-export purposes these days. That's the world we live in now, for better or for worse.

mehrzad 12y ago

>why such hostility I really hope you didn't say that just because it appears the author is female, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt. The blogpost was not hostile at all.

xtrumanx 12y ago
Why did you feel the need to mention your suspicion of misogyny? Did the OP present any reason for you to believe he felt that way due to his comment? Your comment sounds akin to the old political tactic of asking your political opponent if he stopped beating his wife.
tatterdemalion 12y ago
I am not a man.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  I don't think that's a very useful point, here. Stereotypes leave plenty of room for women wanting to cut each other down. FWIW, I also read hostility in the original post, and don't expect that was influenced tremendously by the apparent gender of the author in my case or yours.

dllthomas 12y ago

"If he doesn't want the GCC to be useful for non-free software, why ifs there language preventing compilation from falling under the linking clause of the GPL?" I think one can sensibly draw a distinction between "I don't want to adapt the software in ways that will serve that purpose" and "I want men with guns to limit Freedom 0".