4 ms·

This article does a good job of explaining the choice of features to implement in GPL software as a political strategy rather than a religion. Especially good

This article does a good job of explaining the choice of features to implement in GPL software as a political strategy rather than a religion. Especially good timing for this to be brought back up with the recent controversial request by RMS for some LLVM interoperability to be blocked from Emacs. [1] I enjoy free software, but it is painful to think that I might not be able to use Emacs with software that I consider to be equally free (LLVM) due to political strategies. I know RMS has been through enough of the embrace-extend-extinguish era to be suspicious, but given the quality of free toolchains today and the surrounding communities, I have doubts of this history repeating itself in LLVM. [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00360.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg003...

jumpwah 12y ago
http://youtu.be/-ItFjEG3LaA http://youtu.be/-ItFjEG3LaA The speaker talks about copyleft and how it's dying, and mentions that he's certain the gcc will one day become irrelevant and die to llvm, due to llvm's commercial support and traction.
- glandium 12y ago
  The speaker is the same person who wrote the article.
hsivonen 12y ago
I got downvoted here on HN for worrying that anti-LLVM politics could hinder the adoption of Rust in GNU projects. Looks like my worry of anti-LLVM politics affecting what gets into GNU projects isn't entirely unfounded.
- sanxiyn 12y ago
  Yes, I do worry about this, and I started working on rustc backend using GCC.
spiralpolitik 12y ago
And that is the tragedy of the whole thing. If GCC were the only game in town then RMS' strategy would work. But it's not and all that will end up happening is developers abandoning the GPL for more liberal licenses that they allow them the freedom to do what they need to do get things done. The end result being the savannah turning into a reservation.
amyjess 12y ago
Oh, it goes deeper than that. One of the many reasons why LLVM is taking off is because it provides an API that lets programs hook into the compiler, which means IDEs can deeply integrate with the compiler. For example, IDEs can highlight errors based on where the compiler says errors are instead of having to run its own parser for the language. Why doesn't gcc have this feature? Well, it was proposed, but it was shot down because RMS doesn't want proprietary tools to be able to hook into gcc. In fact, gcc was deliberately designed as a monolithic application with no API specifically to keep third-party tools away from it. So yet another reason why people are moving away from gcc is because llvm/clang enables you to have better development tools. GNU is being killed by its own religion.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Spivak 12y ago
  So why not just make that part of the license? Just require any tool that uses the GCC API, even transitively, to be licensed under something GPL compatible. I know there would probably be a huge number of loopholes to plug but this is really something that should be fixed outside of the actual code.
  - cozzyd 12y ago
    I was thinking the same thing. Change the GCC license to preclude such use by introducing a variant of the GPL for compilers and similar tools.
    - jeremysalwen 12y ago
      Linked from the original article is another piece by the author describing precisely such a license: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/01/27/gcc-exception.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/01/27/gcc-exception.html . I'm rather surprised I haven't heard of this before.
      - 12y ago

jumpwah 12y ago

http://youtu.be/-ItFjEG3LaA http://youtu.be/-ItFjEG3LaA The speaker talks about copyleft and how it's dying, and mentions that he's certain the gcc will one day become irrelevant and die to llvm, due to llvm's commercial support and traction.

glandium 12y ago
The speaker is the same person who wrote the article.

hsivonen 12y ago

I got downvoted here on HN for worrying that anti-LLVM politics could hinder the adoption of Rust in GNU projects. Looks like my worry of anti-LLVM politics affecting what gets into GNU projects isn't entirely unfounded.

sanxiyn 12y ago
Yes, I do worry about this, and I started working on rustc backend using GCC.

spiralpolitik 12y ago

And that is the tragedy of the whole thing. If GCC were the only game in town then RMS' strategy would work. But it's not and all that will end up happening is developers abandoning the GPL for more liberal licenses that they allow them the freedom to do what they need to do get things done. The end result being the savannah turning into a reservation.

amyjess 12y ago

Oh, it goes deeper than that. One of the many reasons why LLVM is taking off is because it provides an API that lets programs hook into the compiler, which means IDEs can deeply integrate with the compiler. For example, IDEs can highlight errors based on where the compiler says errors are instead of having to run its own parser for the language. Why doesn't gcc have this feature? Well, it was proposed, but it was shot down because RMS doesn't want proprietary tools to be able to hook into gcc. In fact, gcc was deliberately designed as a monolithic application with no API specifically to keep third-party tools away from it. So yet another reason why people are moving away from gcc is because llvm/clang enables you to have better development tools. GNU is being killed by its own religion.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 12y ago
So why not just make that part of the license? Just require any tool that uses the GCC API, even transitively, to be licensed under something GPL compatible. I know there would probably be a huge number of loopholes to plug but this is really something that should be fixed outside of the actual code.
- cozzyd 12y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. Change the GCC license to preclude such use by introducing a variant of the GPL for compilers and similar tools.
  - jeremysalwen 12y ago
    Linked from the original article is another piece by the author describing precisely such a license: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/01/27/gcc-exception.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/01/27/gcc-exception.html . I'm rather surprised I haven't heard of this before.
    - 12y ago