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FSF's Richard Stallman Calls LLVM a 'Terrible Setback'
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Stallman has called LLVM a terrible setback in a new mailing list exchange over GCC vs. Clang. LLVM continues to be widely used and grow in popularity for different uses, but it's under a BSD-style license rather than the GPL. RMS wrote, 'For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance. The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers — so that all contribution to LLVM directly helps proprietary software as much as it helps us.'"
Humanity calls Stallman a terrible setback.
This is kind of why I give him the nickname Richard Marx Stalin. Basically his idea is that nothing can be free unless it fits his idea of freedom, which in itself kind of negates the meaning of the word free (liberty.) Much like the historical figures depicted, their ideas of freedom required sacrificing other areas of your life in order to meet their definition, which is just paradoxical.
In general I'm supportive of the idea that releasing the source changes is required, but in the end the code belongs to whoever the original author is, and if they don't want to add that caveat, then they shouldn't be required to. Why RMS is so against that yet claims to be pro freedom, I'll never understand.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Stallman should want to help everyone. His statement shows that he only wants to help GPL hippies.