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>out of fear of a closed-source boogyman which doesn't exist any more, thanks to clang (if it ever did). Eh, what ? Apple is already shipping their proprietary

>out of fear of a closed-source boogyman which doesn't exist any more, thanks to clang (if it ever did). Eh, what ? Apple is already shipping their proprietary fork of Clang which supports their proprietary language Swift, this is exactly what Free Software which Stallman advocates is working against. The whole idea of Free Software is that the end user will have the full rights to examine, modify, copy, run said software, proprietary plugins in GCC flies right in the face of that, so obviously Stallman is opposed to them.

anon1385 12y ago
>Eh, what ? Apple is already shipping their proprietary fork of Clang which supports their proprietary language Swift, this is exactly what Free Software which Stallman advocates is working against. Thats exactly the point. Anybody wanting to make a proprietary language implementation, or proprietary IDE is already using llvm anyway, and would remain doing so. New projects of that nature would almost certainly still use llvm. The only people really being affected by this are people who want to use GNU tooling, but are left with deliberately crippled tools. The ability to develop plugins for GCC has existed for years now, but nobody has used it to do the evil things RMS insisted would happen (remember, he blocked the creation of the plugin interface for many years). The main reason is that Clang/LLVM is just much easier and nicer to work with (e.g. you don't have to write and maintain your own plugin to export an AST instead of having it be part of the core project). Hence all the brightest young minds in compiler research and language development are using LLVM in their work instead of GCC and an entire generation that could have been using and contributing to GNU software are working to improve 'the enemy'. Its hard to think of a more valuable group of people to drive away. Or a more thorough way to drive them away than to try to put intellectual shackles on them. Stallman's suggestion of only exporting a gimped AST that only allows a few specific transformations gives people involved in languages and tooling the same reaction as RMS feels when told he can't see the code for the software on his printer. >The whole idea of Free Software is that the end user will have the full rights to examine, modify, copy, run said software, proprietary plugins in GCC flies right in the face of that, so obviously Stallman is opposed to them. Nobody is proposing creating proprietary plugins for GCC. People are proposing a GPL licensed plugin to export the AST for use by emacs. No proprietary code involved at all. RMS has said he would block the use of such a plugin in emacs, thus deliberately crippling emacs, which is why emacs is probably going to get forked (again).
- gillianseed 12y ago
  Whether you find it likely or unlikely to happen is not part of the equation, copyleft was created to _ensure_ as far as possible that the end user would have certain rights. >The ability to develop plugins for GCC has existed for years now, but nobody has used it to do the evil things RMS insisted would happen (remember, he blocked the creation of the plugin interface for many years). First off the plugin api is unstable which discourages out-of-tree patches, secondly there's the gcc runtime library exception which only allows distribution of proprietary binaries created with gcc if said binaries was not generated using proprietary plugin(s). >Nobody is proposing creating proprietary plugins for GCC. People are proposing a GPL licensed plugin to export the AST for use by emacs. But allowing for that will also make it possible to use a proprietary backend with GCC, thus allowing the circumventing of rights which copyleft licensed software is there to ensure. It doesn't matter if you think it's 'unlikely to happen', again copyleft exists to ensure that this does not happen.

anon1385 12y ago

>Eh, what ? Apple is already shipping their proprietary fork of Clang which supports their proprietary language Swift, this is exactly what Free Software which Stallman advocates is working against. Thats exactly the point. Anybody wanting to make a proprietary language implementation, or proprietary IDE is already using llvm anyway, and would remain doing so. New projects of that nature would almost certainly still use llvm. The only people really being affected by this are people who want to use GNU tooling, but are left with deliberately crippled tools. The ability to develop plugins for GCC has existed for years now, but nobody has used it to do the evil things RMS insisted would happen (remember, he blocked the creation of the plugin interface for many years). The main reason is that Clang/LLVM is just much easier and nicer to work with (e.g. you don't have to write and maintain your own plugin to export an AST instead of having it be part of the core project). Hence all the brightest young minds in compiler research and language development are using LLVM in their work instead of GCC and an entire generation that could have been using and contributing to GNU software are working to improve 'the enemy'. Its hard to think of a more valuable group of people to drive away. Or a more thorough way to drive them away than to try to put intellectual shackles on them. Stallman's suggestion of only exporting a gimped AST that only allows a few specific transformations gives people involved in languages and tooling the same reaction as RMS feels when told he can't see the code for the software on his printer. >The whole idea of Free Software is that the end user will have the full rights to examine, modify, copy, run said software, proprietary plugins in GCC flies right in the face of that, so obviously Stallman is opposed to them. Nobody is proposing creating proprietary plugins for GCC. People are proposing a GPL licensed plugin to export the AST for use by emacs. No proprietary code involved at all. RMS has said he would block the use of such a plugin in emacs, thus deliberately crippling emacs, which is why emacs is probably going to get forked (again).

gillianseed 12y ago
Whether you find it likely or unlikely to happen is not part of the equation, copyleft was created to _ensure_ as far as possible that the end user would have certain rights. >The ability to develop plugins for GCC has existed for years now, but nobody has used it to do the evil things RMS insisted would happen (remember, he blocked the creation of the plugin interface for many years). First off the plugin api is unstable which discourages out-of-tree patches, secondly there's the gcc runtime library exception which only allows distribution of proprietary binaries created with gcc if said binaries was not generated using proprietary plugin(s). >Nobody is proposing creating proprietary plugins for GCC. People are proposing a GPL licensed plugin to export the AST for use by emacs. But allowing for that will also make it possible to use a proprietary backend with GCC, thus allowing the circumventing of rights which copyleft licensed software is there to ensure. It doesn't matter if you think it's 'unlikely to happen', again copyleft exists to ensure that this does not happen.