LLVM Clang Compiler Now C++11 Feature Complete

An anonymous reader writes "With the latest development work on Clang ahead of the release of LLVM version 3.3, Clang is now C++11 feature complete. The last remaining features of the ISO C++11 feature specification have been implemented. C++11 support for GCC is also more or less complete."

Comments

Thank you, Apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of what you may personally think about Apple, they have made some very valuable contributions to LLVM and Clang. So I just want to say, thank you, Apple. Your generosity has touched my heart, and made C++11 a reality.

Re:Thank you, Apple!

[rtfa-troll]

What makes you think it has anything to do with generosity?

Assuming he's not a shill (in which case the answer would be his pay check), propaganda, stupidity and things like ESR's essay saying that the GPL is no longer needed.

For a time, up to a few years ago it looked like programmers could become truly independent of the companies they work directly for, a bit like graphic artists, shop keepers, SAP specialists and so on. The basis of this would be that most companies would use the same FOSS software, sharing that from company to company. The vast efficiency gain would have been shared between the (no longer) customers of big IT companies like Microsoft and the programmers. Software would start to advance at the rate that benefitted its users, not the people stealing from them.

Apple, and to a large extent Google, have come with new business models where they take the output of that process and rebundle it in a way which allows them to avoid sharing the key features which differentiate their products. In Google's case by keeping the most important bits on servers where you can't access it. In Apple's case by adding proprietary GUIs and other features which mean that nobody else can the free stuff and compete with them.

LLVM is one of their key tools in trying to leverage that. This is done for profit, mostly by taking money out of the pockets of people like Slashdotters. It is a tool in ensuring they will be able to build developer environments where they take your source code and hide it from you. It is not a coincidence that we keep getting stories about there being lots of non-GPL software coming out etc. The shills want us to give them everything we have for free and have no need to return to the community.

Correct answer: License under the AGPLv3 whenever you can and only back off to the GPL or LGPL, let alone MIT licenses when someone gives you a really compelling benefit for doing so.

Re:BSD

[SuperKendall]

The only freedom this limits in practice use is the freedom to profit off the work of others.

Why is that so bad? If I'm writing code to share, I want others to use it. In that sense they are profiting, with code that works better/is more popular/comes out sooner. Just because some people ALSO profit monetarily should not matter to me in the slightest, again I am just happy someone could use the code I wrote.

I am not a supported of IP as a concept in general but it exists; to that end GPL has succeeded in ensuring there is a workable free ecosystem that I really don't think would exist with out it.

There are countless existing examples showing it does work: BSD UNIX itself, Webkit, and the very Clang under discussion. It is crazy to claim it does not work. Just because the GPL works fine as designed, does not mean a BSD approach cannot ALSO work.

So people who are not interested in licensing considerations don't think about it much; a tautology.

No; people who are not interested in the political aspect of licenses are forced to think about it anyway. By choosing BSD it reduces the amount of thought put into the license to the minimum, because it is the one with the greatest political freedom.

This is true of the GPL and LGPL as well;

As someone who writes some commercial software it is NOT true of the GPL3. It is true of the LGPL - which is why the FSF is trying to get rid of it.

both of which ensure that those commercial users actually do give back

No they don't. They just ensure that someone COULD legally go after them. But there are lots of violations we already see all over the place. As a company choosing the BSD is useful because you can be sure you are not in violation if someone forgets to contribute code back.

People in companies who change open source code contribute back not because of the license, but because they don't want to risk changes being over-written in the future when updates are applied. It's (a) extra work and (b) (far more likely) something that has to be remembered or become process. Either way it's very likely that in a few years someone will forget and then disaster will follow. So companies have natural motivation far greater than the legal motivation to contribute source back.

Yes and this is really unfortunate.

In no way is it unfortunate. It's a good thing for ALL open source licenses that more people are comfortable using and sharing force.

To start with, the GPL was needed to get people generally understanding that code should come back, and to provide some solid bases of code that were free. But at this point, the BSD is more useful to more fully open up companies to using open source in everything. Then after some time, the GPL can come into wider play again when companies understand that sharing source code works for everyone. So at this point BSD is doing more to help GPL than the GPL itself is.