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GCC 4.2.1 Released
larry bagina writes "GCC 4.2.1 was released 4 days ago. Although this minor update would otherwise be insignificant, it will be the final GPL v2 release; all future releases will be GPL v3. Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"
Who is opposing the transition to GPLv3 and why?
How does making a license freely available for software authors to use translate into "shoveling [sic] GPL3 down our throats"?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I'm very interested in everything Free Software, and have been following developments around GPLv3 and its adoption rather closely. Apart from some flaimbaits proclaiming how $CORP was going to abandon GCC (or anything else) after going for v3 of GPL, there is no evidence whatsoever supporting that this might actually be considered by anyone important - or in case there is, it wasn't visible enough for me to spot it.
So, user number 561269, would you please elaborate on the subject and cite any credible source supporting your view that a major contributor to GCC is considering to fork and "have it their way"? Your posting thoroughly lacks that kind of information right now, and therefore I think it deserves being tagged bogus or useless.
Thanks in advance for clearing this up.
- c0l0
(who's growing tired of all this anti-GPLv3-FUD swellig so much recently fast)
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Once more, Slashdot's editors demonstrate that they are here solely for adviews and not to provide "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters". The ECGS fork will be nothing like the current fork. ECGS was forked for technical/organisational reasons: GCC was being developed much like a closed-source program with a free licence, which resulted in a stagnating compiler and unhappy would-be contributors. ECGS should the superiority of the "bazaar"/open-source development method of the "cathedral"/closed-source method in this particular context. All of this is well-known information you can find just about anywhere on the web.
Given that GCC development will remain open, this fork cannot be compared. On the other hand, we do have another situation that might be considered similar: The X.org/XFree86 fork. XFree86 was developed under a free software licence, but with 4.4 this was changed to a non-free licence. X.org forked the most recent free version and has basically completely replaced XFree86.
But, of course, this is still not perfectly comparable. XFree86 was using a relatively closed development method, and the X.org fork's more open style saw it rejuvinated: And indeed, this was part of the purpose of the fork. A GPLv2 GCC fork will not see this sort of rejuvination, as GCC has already seen the benefit for it of an open method, and continues to use it. (See: The EGCS fork the article poster referred to.)
In addition, the XFree86 licence was widely regarded as being non-free and some major distributions (e.g. Debian, Fedora) considered it completely inappropriate for inclusion. It was made unilaterally without discussion without relevant stakeholders. The GPLv3, however, has had public draft releases and discussion including many major distributors and producers of free software. Although it removes certain freedoms distributors had with GPLv2 (which, largely, went completely against the spirit of the GPLv2), the GPLv3 has the agreement of the people needed to make it work. There will be basically top-down push for adoption as there was with XFree86/X.org.
My prediction: Any GPLv2 fork of GCC will be largely forgotten in a year or two.
Look out!
Smells like FUD.
The use of weasel words, speculation of "private discussions" (how would one in the public know the content of a private discussion without being a part of it himself?) and the use of the textbook definition of straw man by bringing up the unrelated fact that one fork have been successful in the past and implying that, because of that, one "revolt" is imminent, is nothing by an ill flamebait, in order to generate controversy and the unavoidable licensing flamewar that it will certainly ensue.
This is sad because Slashdot used to be a place where, when a new version of software were posted, the discussion were directed to the changelog and the new features, fixed bugs, and this particular article didn't even mentioned that. It was a cheap shot at GPLv3, a license that seems to have lots of people that dislikes it, people that aren't even affected by it in the first place. GPL doesn't cover use, only distribution.
Sad, sad, sad, this used to be a cool blog with real "news for nerds" but lately it seems more interested in generating polemic and the page views that accompany it.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing in my post shows any support (or lack of) for any of the mentioned licenses, nor discusses the their merit (or lack of). So keep me out of the flamewar.
If the GPL v3 objections are real and widespread, then the GPL v2 forks will survive.
If the GPL v2 objections are unfounded or astroturfing, then the GPL v2 forks will die.
I think the grumbling will blow over; I don't see any serious problems with the GPL v3. In fact, the fact that GPL v3 is compatible with more open source licenses seems like a big advantage.
To be honest from my reading of the gcc mailing list, most of the complaints seemed to be focused around the fact that the original plan (which was up for discussion at least) was to change the numbering system so they went straight from 4.2.1 to 4.3.3 (lots of 3's to ram the point home of course) which would be confusing to most people (and probably to a few packaging systems as well). With what would be 4.3 going to 4.4.
The big problem is that RMS seems to want all patches put into SVN after July 31st to be GPL3+ no matter what, even on release branches which automatically pollutes them. This then causes problems for corporate users who may then have to wait for a legal department evaluation on the license...
I don't think many people would object if the GPLv3+ restriction was for 4.3/4.4+ really. (well as long as RMS doesn't go mad and revoke the linking exception for libgcc anyway...)
ZoeP
I suppose that a lot of free software authors feel that the FSF is being a little heavy handed. In fairness, it's hard to see how (after consultations lasting more than a year) that the foundation could have handled this better. All the same, there are inevitably going to be people who are not comfortable with the new licence. Given a choice of accept v3 or start a fork, it's perhaps inevitable that people who have invested a lot of effort in GNU projects are going to regard the licence as an imposition.
The new licence was always going to be divisive, although in the light of the MS-Novell pact, I think the benefits will be worthwhile in the long run. But that doesn't mean that devs on large projects like GCC don't have a valid point.
The trouble is that there's nothing now to be done about it, but to see how the dice fall.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I follow the GCC list (you know, where all significant contributors hang around), and the only thing I've seen discussed is what should happen to the old branches when GCC goes GPLv3, and if the change should come with a version change. The thread starts here.
Me thinks someone is on crack.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I'm a single-person software business, I don't hold any patents, I release by far a majority of my code under the BSD revised licence.
I -do- however have a portion of code that I keep locked up for a commercial application, if I start using a GPL v3 GCC will I be putting myself into peril?
Incidently, I'm not in the US, but well... sort of, I'm in Australia, which is almost as good as another US state *sigh*.
References? The only grumblings I can see in the GCC mailing lists are about the version number change that accompanies the GPLv3 upgrade. A few developers feel that a license change is not a new feature so the first GPL version should be 4.2.2, not 4.3. And one developer who complains that not allowing backported patches to stay under GPLv2 will be a burdon to companies offering support for older versions (eg Novell, Xandros and Linspire).
It's worth noting that the linked to article actually contains nothing about GCC developers complaining about GPLv3.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
And no one noticed yet that binutils already went to GPLv3?
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
- Linux distributors choosing to distribute GPLv3 binaries will be able to do so without changing what they're doing now.
- You don't understand GPLv3 and think others might be confused too.
None of this addresses the question: How does releasing GCC amount to shoveling the license down our throats?"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
First F in FSF stands for Free. Your proprietary software is not free.
Even if you don't like GPL, you still can use Linux. You only can't distribute Linux with your proprietary modifications.
"...conditions you must meet in order to use the software ..."
GPL v2 and GPLv3 do not restrict you in anyway how you can use the software.
Mostly EGCS happened because Richard Kenner, while widely recognized as an excellent compiler engineer, wasn't that good a maintainer. In particular, the Cygnus people felt that their changes to the C++ front-end was too long to get in to the mainline tree. The egcs branch tried to "modernize" the development process with open mailing lists and anonymous cvs access, as opposed to the traditional ("Cathedral") approach.
Officially the egcs was an experimental branch of gcc, and there was never a feud between the Cygnus guys between egcs, and the FSF. The FSF could thus make egcs the official gcc branch without losing face, the experiment had simply been a success.
The "link" to egcs is simply because the submitter is a troll. That gcc would change to GPL3 has been known and accepted since the whole GPL3 process started, and those developers who cared have responded by getting involved in the GPL3 process. The rare protests have been from non-developers only, and have seem more motivated by misguided Linus worship than by anything else.
I maintain a more or less portable OSS project (uSTL - an STL implementation) and I have had to make at least a few changes for each compiler release. Sometimes it happens due to new warnings that catch potential bugs I didn't know about. Sometimes it is due to policy changes (like the stricter aliasing rules in gcc 4), and sometimes there are new features I want to take advantage of.
Since I am strongly opposed to GPLv3 and anything that uses it, I am not going to upgrade my gcc any further than 4.2.1, which I'll probably do today. This means that uSTL, and my other five projects on SourceForge, may have problems compiling on later gcc releases, even though I will not intentionally put any incompatibilities in my code. Not being able to predict the future, I don't know whether these problems would be minor ones or major ones, but I do know that unless they expose some fundamental problem with my code, I will reject any bugs related to them and state explicitly that any gcc > 4.2.1 is not supported and never will be.
Now, you probably wouldn't care about this. After all, I only had a few thousand downloads - a minute fraction of the developers in the world. And you might say "oh, who needs this guy's code anyway?" But I have a feeling I'm not the only one, and I do occasionally contribute to projects other than my own. Perhaps you don't care if you lose my skills and the skills of all those other developers, but I suspect that they do all add up to quite a bit, and while you might not notice it at first, the GPLv3 camp might get lonelier and emptier as time passes.
I read the GCC mailing list. I haven't heard or seen any grumbling. Nothing I'd call significant. The most grumbling I've read is on how to deal with the branching and labeling/versioning which always seems to be a GCC issue; it's a major release number with no new features, when major release number imply new features... Read this. There are closed branches of GCC, ones that vendors may add custom support for their hardware to, stuff like that, those people will have to change things. There was some discussion about how you license patches, purely an academic discussion on licensing though. Like I said, I haven't seen any grumbling and it simply doesn't affect end-users.
I also read LKML and I don't think that that is terribly significant, Linus brings up some points that seem to go un-addressed elsewhere. There is also some disagreement about how something like Linux goes through the process of being recopyrighted, you see there are people that are dead that have contributed large amounts of code. With Linux in particular, nobody was requested to re-assign their copyright to anyone like they are with GCC and a lot GNU projects. Really the only serious disagreement I've seen anywhere is from companies that exploit free software and are worried that they might have to share their substandard source code or rewrite the free components that make up the heart of their applications. Some of the hacks from the magazines are trying to stir the pot a little but that's it. It's unfortunate, some of the folks that really benefit the most from free software, folks that have products that exist because free software makes it possible for them to afford to make software, are now trying to attack and undermine the very software they depend upon.
But that doesn't put actually any restrictions on me. I don't care one bit what Microsoft wants me to do or not to do.
Otherwise, here is how I can destroy the use of the gcc compiler on Redhat in two seconds:
I, gnasher719, hereby promise not to sue any Redhat Linux users for use of any patents that I own that are used in Redhat Linux, unless that Redhat Linux user uses gcc to compile anything.
Now Redhat Linux users can't use gcc anymore!
I hope you can see what's wrong with this argument. Exactly the same is wrong with your argument against gcc usage on Linspire.
as a software developer you feel that the new version of GPL was not written with software developers in minds, and for software developers benefit.
The license was written with hackers and tinkerers in mind. It was designed specifically for our benefit, because it protects our ability to write and modify open source code on consumer hardware devices which employ open source code.
If that's not important to you personally, fine. But you should realize that as computer use shifts further and further from desktops to phones, pdas, and other highly proprietary platforms, there are a lot of free/open source developers who will appreciate the "rights" protected by GPLv3, even as they complain about it now.
StoneCypher is Full of BS