LLVM & GCC Compiler Developers To Begin Collaborating

An anonymous reader writes "While RMS is opposed to LLVM over its BSD-like license rather than the GPL, LLVM/Clang and GCC developers have agreed to try to start cooperating in an "open compiler initiative" to jointly tackle common issues that plague both compilers and issues that can be better served by working together rather than creating fragmentation between the two popular open-source compilers."

Comments

fb

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck beta

Re:fb

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you.

Re:fb

[Anonymous Coward]

:D

Re:fb

[Anonymous Coward]

Buck feta!

Re:fb

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree with both.

altslashdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.altslashdot.org/

in case y'all didn't know.

#F...BETA

Open borders... one way?

[paxcoder]

I'm not sure how GCC could benefit from this.
While theoretically GPL could subsume BSD code produced from the collaboration, I reckon it's more likely that brains are going to migrate rather than code. And I don't see those working on LLVM (for commercial interest) migrating to GCC.
If I were RMS I'd be worried.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[kthreadd]

Well, just getting both camps into the same room from time to time would be an improvement.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Rosyna]

I'm pretty sure this is not about sharing code, but about collaborating on needed features via a shared spec. So both compilers implement something a standard way instead of coming up with new features independently.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[paxcoder]

For example?
Would GCC migrate to LLVM bytecode? What does that give us (except lack of diversity)?
Not sure what else could these two compilers have in common.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[thoth]

I was a compiler grad student, and my university had its own intermediate representation it did work with. Back then (mid 90's) there was also SUIF (stanford university intermediate form), something I forget from University of Illinois... there were probably others too. But some big-name CS departments focused on other stuff, databases, operating systems, AI, and weren't necessarily up there in compilers or revealing the details of their intermediate form (not that it's was a secret, merely from academia the algorithm is more important than the intermediate form used).

Now, my old school adopted LLVM. I recently checked as I'm working with LLVM/Clang and found that quite interesting. I can't even pull up Stanford's SUIF compiler group research page (suif.stanford.edu, maybe I'm just unlucky or it's gone/moved/temporarily down). And LLVM/Clang is from University of Illinois... so yeah, I'm sure they are using it too.

The benefit to GCC from this is to not become obsolete in 5-10 years, from a steady influx of improved algorithms and tuning from a body of people that can easily contribute. Just from the fact LLVM/Clang is easier to work with, universities using it for their classes/research means that there is a steady crop of undergrads/grads familiar with LLVM/Clang and its set of libraries. They can contribute, and the research community doesn't have to roll its own intermediate form for research algorithm implementation and then throw that out when it comes to implementing the same algorithms in an actual intermediate language that is used in a real compiler. When you're a student, the last thing you want to do when you've got a project due in the semester, or you are trying to write your thesis/dissertation and graduate, is screw with compiler internals that are purposely difficult to work with (GCC).

Yes, GCC has a core group that has done an excellent job. But they are facing commercial interests improving the LLVM/Clang (i.e. Apple and Obj-C) plus now the OpenCL and OpenMP work going on, and on top of that an ever growing population of former students with skills/knowledge and perhaps the desire to contribute.

f I were RMS I'd be worried.

Agreed. Those years he opposed modularizing GCC might have really hurt the project in a way that isn't done being felt yet.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, the pretty huge list of C and C++ extensions that both gcc and clang implement, and that are invented by the authors of said tools. It's much better that the two talk about it, and come up with one spec that both compilers implement than to have two competing standards that results in code one or other compiler can't deal with.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[thoth]

There's a boatload of stuff to agree on for better interop. The language itself (c/c++) says nothing about a lot of stuff people kind of expect these days.

  Language extensions specific to compilers (e.g. __user), toolchains (e.g. llvm is working on lld, a linker, to replace the default system linker), security additions (e.g. if I build a library with gcc and specify stack protection and canaries, none of which are in the language standard, will I be able to link a clang built library and executable and actually have it work), etc.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[maxwell demon]

Another thing would be to harmonize the representation of fundamental classes like std::string and std::vector, so those classes can be passed between codes compiled with both compilers, even though the implementation code for those classes might otherwise differ.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you produce a technically inferior compiler for political reasons you deserve a world of hurt from superior, freer alternatives.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't GCC just assimilate all the parts of Clang that were agreed to be better than GCC? That doesn't seem like it would require cooperation...

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps two worlds of hurt.

Also, FUCK BETA.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

If GCC assimilated the open licensing, that would be awesome!

Re:Open borders... one way?

[hairyfeet]

I'll get hate for saying this but fuck it, truth is truth and RMS burnt a LOT of bridges with GPL V3 so I wouldn't be surprised to see more devs moving from GCC to LLVM and Clang.

What RMS and his fans just seem to refuse to accept is a simple little bit of reality which is thus...this ain't 1979 anymore, no matter how many times RMS calls everyone "hackers" like he's at a computer club meting. The chips, the designs...we are talking about INSANE complexity folks, it is just not something "a couple of guys banging away in their basement" is gonna be able to do. What you have to have is dozens of highly skilled, highly trained guys working on this stuff 8-12 hours a day every day...the requires funds folks, no way you can get around that.

What does that have to do with RMS giving corps the bird with GPL V3? Simple...where do you think ALL that money was coming from? Donations by individuals? Nope that was all being paid for by corps whom RMS made clear aren't welcome round here anymore. with GPL V2 you had kind of a "wink wink" with the corps while GPL V3 has made sure that you had better be a GPLed company if you want anything to do with GPL V3 code. This is why Google has a "No GPL V3" rule with ChromeOS and Android, and I have no doubt you'll be seeing money dry up for projects like GCC, simply because companies will be afraid to touch it.

At the end of the day encouraging corps to open their code is fine, flipping them the bird if they refuse to go GPL? Not the smartest thing. We should be able to tell within the next year whether all the money is gonna go to GCC or LLVM/Clang, I personally think it'll be the latter.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[dbc]

Yes, exactly. Practical compilers are always compelled to do extensions beyond the language spec, simply because people need to get work done. So if gcc and clang can agree on inter-operability of extensions, that is a huge help. It also is going to be influential in language spec committees when it comes time to drive some of those functions into the spec. Another area for fruitful collaboration that helps people get work done is to drive torward mix-and-match linking. Neither of the above require sharing code.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure this is not about sharing code, but about collaborating on needed features via a shared spec. So both compilers implement something a standard way instead of coming up with new features independently.

Which puts any application that can make use of either one firmly into the "aggregated"/"independent work" territory, meaning that the GPL of GCC has no coercive power over derived applications.

A "shared spec" for "needed features" would be totally putting the shaft to what RMS wrote the GPL for. And yet you can bet your sweet ass that when he vetoes these developments, there will be an outcry along the lines "he had a good idea once but now he's gone totally crazy".

When a derived application does not need to bother whether its components are GPLed or not, the GPL missed its purpose, and RMS is not going to let his one weapon of choice become dull. He won't pick a fight he'll lose with it.

And I know exactly the resulting headlines. So tiresome.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen what happened to OpenDarwin? They closed shop because all that they achieved in the end was unpaid labor for Apple, with their own project being mostly academical, Apple keeping all the good bits to themselves.

If you close your eyes to long-term consequences (and that's what "political reasons" are about), maybe you don't "deserve" a world of hurt, but it is coming your way anyway.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day encouraging corps to open their code is fine, flipping them the bird if they refuse to go GPL? Not the smartest thing.

You want more projects like OpenDarwin, based on Apple "opening" "their" code? They closed shop after wasting a few years because Apple was just using them as unpaid labor without giving them enough to result in a useful whole, and dragging their feet even doing that.

That's the reality. And that's the reason that you are right regarding

We should be able to tell within the next year whether all the money is gonna go to GCC or LLVM/Clang, I personally think it'll be the latter.

but that's hardly surprising. The money never flowed in the direction of the GPL. The huge commercial success of the Linux kernel is not because of money flowing in, but money coming from GPLed software. The goose is laying golden eggs on the terms of the GPL and it's not letting itself get slaughtered like the teethless BSD goose.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[microbox]

Sanitizers? Just sayin'

Re:Open borders... one way?

[microbox]

Well, clang uses the short-string optimization, which cannot be compatible with GCC's libstdc++. (If it were compatible, then GCC would also be using said optimization.) So that's not going to work.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

The chips, the designs...we are talking about INSANE complexity folks, it is just not something "a couple of guys banging away in their basement" is gonna be able to do. What you have to have is dozens of highly skilled, highly trained guys working on this stuff 8-12 hours a day every day...the requires funds folks, no way you can get around that.

Don't disagree that is how it is or seems now, but that is defeatist fantasy talk. There is no reason people have to play the games that corporations play. There is no reason everyone has to follow along with what our "leaders" tell us we have to do.

There is no reason we need the "latest and greatest" (full of backdoors) because that is what is selling (being shoved down everyone's throat) at the moment.

It is also insane how you imply companies are not run by individuals, like they are these shadowy organizations that exist outside of everything else, we all must bow down to them, and noone is in charge.

People are responsible for what corporations do, plain and simple.

"Corporations" (rather, the CEOs bilking everyone else) are spoiled whiny little crybabies if they are all butthurt because some people did what they said they were going to do all along, stuck to their values and ideals, peaceably and legally, and now the corporations feel-bads are hurt because they can't own the whole damn world?

How can you call "having values and sticking to them" the same as "flipping them the bird" ?

Insane.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like Michael Jackson crying that his 14-year old sleepover pal was rude and mean because he wouldn't sleep with him.

"Flipping them the bird"? Really? We all have to bow down and give everything to the corporations because they say so?

Fuck that. And fuck beta.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[VortexCortex]

Clearly you have never used IRC.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[cheesybagel]

The history of computer software and hardware design has been all about managing complexity in order to do more things with less people since the beginning.

As for your little tirade against the GPLv3 you have no clue about what the license changes mean. The only substantial difference is that anyone who distributes GPLv3 code *must* give the recipients a royalty free license to any patents they own that are required to be able to use that particular product. I do not think that is particularly onerous. In fact it keeps the spirit of the original license. Corporations like IBM have included similar clauses when they open sourced software e.g. the IBM Eclipse Public License. Do you think they aren't interested in profiting from it? Eclipse is the basis for their Rational Application Developer suite of tools.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I do not think that is particularly onerous.
Good for you. Have you cleared that with all of our legal departments?

Re:Open borders... one way?

[shutdown -p now]

The level of micro-optimization that is required of a quality C++ standard library implementation pretty much makes it impossible - you can't use common techniques like pimpl, since that extra allocation/dereference would, in some cases, literally slash perf down in half for something designed to be really fast - ironically, both std::string and std::vector would actually qualify (think about the cost of indexing).

Re:Open borders... one way?

[richlv]

could you please clarify what's the problem with gplv3 in the context of gcc ?
a genuine question, i'm not aware of the details in this specific case - it's not like they host modified gcc or something...

also, fuck beta :)

Re:Open borders... one way?

[serviscope_minor]

llvm is working on lld, a linker, to replace the default system linker

Didn't GNU already adopt a modern linker (gold) quite recently?

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

, which cannot be compatible with GCC's libstdc++.

GCC std::string already is incompatible with C++11 and might be incompatible with previous versions. AFAIK they use copy on write to share string data and this among other things can break std::string::reserve semantics (unexpected allocations when the standard says that there should not be any).

Re:Open borders... one way?

[maxwell demon]

It is not compatible with current libstdc++. But if the short string optimization (and/or some other representation changes in other classes) are considered advantageous enough, there's no reason why they could not, at some point, make a single incompatible change to libstdc++ (preferably at the same time when also the next compiler ABI update is necessary, which causes incompatible changes to compiled libraries anyway). The old libstdc++ implementation could still be available by a compiler flag or #define, for those cases where you need compatibility with old libraries which cannot be updated.

Of course a prerequisite would be that the authors of both standard libraries agree on the best implementation. Which probably is the largest hurdle.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[maxwell demon]

You don't need pimpl for that; what you need is identical representations in memory. Then it doesn't matter if different code manipulates those representations, since all the next function will see is the representation, not how it was created.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[shutdown -p now]

Sure, but the representation is tightly coupled to the code in this case - think small string optimization, for example. Once you define it, you may as well share the code because the optimal code for a given implementation is almost certainly going to be the same.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[hairyfeet]

One of the other posters answered your question, I'll highlight it for you "anyone who distributes GPLv3 code *must* give the recipients a royalty free license to any patents they own that are required to be able to use that particular product."

Sorry but no legal dept with a brain is gonna agree to that, you'd be wiping out the patent portfolio by linking in any way with GCC. This is why Apple made Clang, why companies are supporting LLVM, and why Google has a strict "No GPL V3" policy in place for ChromeOS and Android.

Between that and RMS himself saying the GPL is viral and pushing for GPL libraries over LGPL has made GPL verbotten in many places that previously were fine with it. We'll see if I'm right as we should have enough evidence in the next 24 months (to give time for enough to switch to GPL V3 to make most of Linux off limits) but I predict a lot of the money being spent on Linux dev will dry right up. You'll only have the "pure FOSS" companies like RH and Debian supporting it while the rest follow Google and Apple and switch to other licenses.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day encouraging corps to open their code is fine, flipping them the bird if they refuse to go GPL?

If a company avoids GPL'ed software, it's most likely because it wants to develop and sell proprietary software based on it. I suspect the only thing RMS hates more than proprietary software is proprietary software using/based on free software.

RMS has learned the hard way that "encouraging" corps doesn't work. The only thing "corps" respect is a contract, and that's why the FSF hired lawyers to create the GPL.

Captcha: creepy

Re:Open borders... one way?

[gnasher719]

could you please clarify what's the problem with gplv3 in the context of gcc ?
a genuine question, i'm not aware of the details in this specific case - it's not like they host modified gcc or something...

Just as an example: Apple uses a compiler _at runtime_ to compile OpenGL and OpenCL to the hardware. They use LLVM for that. If your favourite game is running on MacOS X or iOS, and it uses OpenGL, LLVM is built into the app (or more likely into the graphics driver). _That_ isn't possible with gcc without releasing the whole graphics driver. And that's something Apple doesn't want to do.

Note that with GPL 2 license, what Apple wanted to do was fine. Now it isn't. The problem for gcc is that compiler writers want to feed their families, and companies like Apple have the money to pay compiler writers who want to feed their families. That's why the development happens in Clang+LLVM, and gcc just copies LLVM work. Must be some very satisfying work.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[MobyDisk]

Why do they not use the same std library implementation? LLVM is a compiler, it can compile the same std library code. If the LLVM designers wanted to improve it, it was GPL with the library extension so at first glance it seems like they could have used it.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Carewolf]

Just as an example: Apple uses a compiler _at runtime_ to compile OpenGL and OpenCL to the hardware. They use LLVM for that. If your favourite game is running on MacOS X or iOS, and it uses OpenGL, LLVM is built into the app (or more likely into the graphics driver). _That_ isn't possible with gcc without releasing the whole graphics driver. And that's something Apple doesn't want to do.

Note that with GPL 2 license, what Apple wanted to do was fine. Now it isn't.

No that would be in complete violation of GPL2 as well. This might be one of the reason Apple likes the BSD license now, but it wasn't the original reason they freaked out over GPL3 because it wouldn't be allowed with any version of GPL.

There was no logical or coherent reason for Apple to back away from GPLv3 when the accepted GPLv2. The GPLv3 debacle was basically just Steve Jobs throwing one of his infamous tantrums.

They do have a good reason to prefer a BSD or LGPL compiler backend to xcode, but that is not relevant to GPLv2 vs GPLv3 discussions.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[theCoder]

Of course, any code that requires a patent license to run isn't exactly free software either. And no free software project "with a brain" should accept code that opens up users to legal liability.

If companies like Apple and Google really are rejecting GPL v3 because of patent issues, that makes me think they want to use their patents against users of the software they are purporting to be "free." Are users of the LLVM compiler going to wake up one day to a lawsuit from one of these companies alleging patent infringement? It's all fun and games until your company is the target of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit because you shipped software compiled with a patented optimization technique or something.

Of course, the sooner that happens, the better. Because then everyone pushing non-GPL licenses will remember why those patent protections are there, and switch back. Or we could just get rid of software patents and not have to worry about the whole mess.

btw, Google and Apple probably don't like GPL v3 because of the anti-Tivoization clauses in GPL v3 that would prevent those companies from locking down the hardware they sell and preventing users from replacing the OS with a different one. But that's not really a patent issue. Nor is it a very nice thing for either company to do. At least Google does make it easier to unlock the device, even if it doesn't come that way by default.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Hatta]

While theoretically GPL could subsume BSD code produced from the collaboration

Yeah, ask Theo DeRaadt about that.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[EvanED]

Gold isn't default yet, but they are working on it. I very recently built it for an experiment, and presumably used the latest stable version of binutils at the time, and in that I'm pretty sure it didn't even build Gold by default and it definitely didn't install Gold as ld by default.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Half-pint HAL]

You want more projects like OpenDarwin, based on Apple "opening" "their" code? They closed shop after wasting a few years because Apple was just using them as unpaid labor without giving them enough to result in a useful whole, and dragging their feet even doing that.

...

The goose is laying golden eggs on the terms of the GPL and it's not letting itself get slaughtered like the teethless BSD goose.

Sorry, but those are two different things. It doesn't matter what the license is if all you've got is part of the code -- a GPL code fragment is no more a complete package than a BSD code fragment.

LLVM is a complete package originating in and maintained by academia. Different different different.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Half-pint HAL]

The chips, the designs...we are talking about INSANE complexity folks, it is just not something "a couple of guys banging away in their basement" is gonna be able to do. What you have to have is dozens of highly skilled, highly trained guys working on this stuff 8-12 hours a day every day...the requires funds folks, no way you can get around that.

Don't disagree that is how it is or seems now, but that is defeatist fantasy talk. There is no reason people have to play the games that corporations play. There is no reason everyone has to follow along with what our "leaders" tell us we have to do.

There is no reason we need the "latest and greatest" (full of backdoors) because that is what is selling (being shoved down everyone's throat) at the moment.

In that case, I have a C64 in my loft I can see you for $300 bucks -- guaranteed free of backdoors.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

You want more projects like OpenDarwin, based on Apple "opening" "their" code? They closed shop after wasting a few years because Apple was just using them as unpaid labor without giving them enough to result in a useful whole, and dragging their feet even doing that.

That was only one reason they failed, the other was a lack of interest in the project. It gave no benefit to anybody, there was no reason to use it over the more popular and more established Linux kernel. Apple contributes heavily to projects like Webkit, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, X11 and many many others and also release the code for Darwin making the OpenDarwin fork obsolete. The fact that OpenDarwin failed was due to lack of interest in actually doing anything with it.

The huge commercial success of the Linux kernel is not because of money flowing in, but money coming from GPLed software.

No it is from the applications (that are most often *not* GPL) that run on top of Linux-powered systems and the contributions to the Linux kernel that enable those systems are funded by corporations with an interest in the proprietary applications that run on the platform, like Google's Android and the ecosystem it has produced. Linux is primarily produced by people funded by corporations that only have an interest in having a working kernel, nothing to do with Free Software, just like Linus himself which is why the kernel is GPLv2 and not GPLv3 and never will be.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you call "having values and sticking to them" the same as "flipping them the bird" ?

Stick to your values all you want, stop fucking bitching just because the clang/LLVM crew doesn't have the same values as you! So stop crying, stick your head back in the sand and just wait for the more tolerant (ability to work with proprietary software developers) licensed products run you over.

Eric Raymond wrote a great piece on the GCC mailing list about how the GCC is in danger of obsolescence by its exclusion of everybody who does not share their values in the face of superior competition from clang, this was then followed up by a post from Richard Stallman detailing his fear of the existence of a free compiler that is not crippled by FSF policies.

The FSF crew only sticks to their policies when it suits them, they use all sorts of proprietary hardware and software and if they truly stuck to their values and didn't piggy-back upon proprietary developments they would be totally fucked.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[paxcoder]

I can't believe I'm reading this!
You're actually saying that it's a bad thing to be oblidged to make patents "free" if you build them into free software.
Are you a corporate entity? Besides having rights, are corporate entities now able to converse? I have no other way of explaining this lack of empathy for the user, for yourself!
You're patent trolls' dream. They don't even need to pay you to promote their next big scheme.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[RockDoctor]

Clearly you have never used IRC.

Correct.

And your point is what? That people meeting people is bad?

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're actually saying that it's a bad thing to be oblidged to make patents "free" if you build them into free software.

Yes! Free Software is not "free of charge" or "free of obligation". R&D firms are hardly going to produce Free Software if it means also giving away patent licenses at no cost, how exactly are they going to fund further R&D? And ultimately it is only "royalty free license to any patents they own that are required to be able to use that particular product" so it is trivial to get around that by not technically being the one who "owns" the patents in question, so not only will it drive away R&D firms but it is also easily circumvented where necessary.

Your anti-patent rage blinds you from seeing the obviousness of the problem there. The other thing to remember is that you cannot patent an idea, even though just about every patent will begin with the first claim essentially being a broad idea which lawyers know will be thrown out but has commonplace to exist in the interest of being thorough and by the time you get about a dozen items down the claims list you will actually get to the invention, if you don't then the patent itself will be thrown out. Not all patents are bad, just some, in fact they are the exception rather than the rule.

Re:Open borders... one way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen what happened to OpenDarwin? They closed shop because all that they achieved in the end was unpaid labor for Apple, with their own project being mostly academical, Apple keeping all the good bits to themselves.

Oh, please. Darwin as an open source OS never developed enough of a userbase or developer community for Apple to treat it as a significant source of unpaid labor. Far as I know, the only sense in which Apple derived much benefit was that they recruited many developers who worked on Darwin during its very brief period of public interest. But you can't call that unpaid labor, now can you?

By the time the OpenDarwin project "shut down", it had spent literal years in a zombie state, kept alive by one crazy obsessive ("Proclus"). He spent most of his time raising a giant stink about how Apple was exploiting and/or oppressing him by not conceding to his every demand about how they should design and develop and license their OS. This guy's rants are probably where you got your impressions from. I honestly think Proclus needed mental health care, and wasn't getting it -- his obsessions and misplaced possessiveness remind me very strongly of a relative who suffered from mental health issues.

RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is not for everyone or every company, get over it.

The BSD[MIT/APACHE/ZLIB] licence is the only real free open source license. In a perfect world we wouldn't need licences at all and everyone wouldn't have a hissyfit every time someone borrowed code from someone.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

RMS knows that (and has made statements to that effect): GPL exists precisely because it's not a perfect world.
While you may call it a freedom, "freedom" to kill would not be a beneficial one.
Speaking metaphorically, that's what BSD license grants you: A way to murder free software in the black hole of proprietary software.
Do companies contribute back? Sure, some do, some of the things. But everything else is competition.
And therein lies the real difference: GPL is against proprietary software, it aims to provide free software to everyone. BSD isn't and doesn't.
Kinda like free vs open.
TL;DR: No.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Licensing is an economic matter, not a technical one.

The only "real" free licence is one which exists in a world without respect for property, so I can access any code at any time and use it as I see fit.

Then in come those who argue that property is freedom, so you have to have the means to stop people taking code, even if that means not moving it off your servers...

And then we realise that it's all arbitrary anyway, and everyone uses "freedom" emotively like "terrorist".

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[kthreadd]

One of the areas where the licensing of gcc have been very successful is within embedded hardware. Gcc has gained a high reputation within this field which has lead to adoption by several vendors of embedded systems. These firms are not known for their generosity or cooperability, so without the GPL it is unlikely that the changes they needed had been contributed back upstream. This is of course only speculation, but I would say that the GPL has overall been advantages to gcc.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[epine]

way to murder

My favourite part is where the wardrobe malfunction puts a dagger through Muhammad's heart. Please, daddy, tell us that part again! I'm waiting with beta'd breath.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Do companies contribute back? Sure, some do, some of the things. But everything else is competition.

I would be very interested in seeing real statistics on this, because my experiences with companies using BSD style licensed code in their software suggests the exact opposite. There are a number of reasons to use open source software in your project, the chief among them being "not reinventing the wheel". The problem is, the moment you generate your own proprietary fork, you're back to reinventing the wheel. Chances are, you made the changes because the software in question didn't quite do what you wanted it to do, or to fix a bug. Great, so now you've got your own branch, and every time you update this software with the latest "official" version for whatever reason (including perhaps, not reinventing the wheel for some new feature) you have to apply your patches and changes, and hope that the patches you built against version X are still valid against version Y.

In my experience, the only time companies don't give back is when they've made such massive changes that they would be maintaining their own branch anyway. And with changes that large, it's extremely unlikely the main branch would ever integrate them all back in, which means the company is maintaining their own fork, regardless of whether or not they've released the code. Now, you can argue (as RMS does) that regardless, the important thing is whether the new code is open, not whether it's ever merged back, but there are considerations to be had as well. Forks split and consume development resources. Different projects all doing the same thing slightly differently create more work for people trying to target those projects, such that writing new useful software that takes advantage of other available resources either requires multiple code paths to handle each resource (think vendor specific CSS tags but worse) or can't be meaningfully built without someone writing additional code.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking metaphorically, that's what BSD license grants you: A way to murder free software in the black hole of proprietary software.

I find it hilarious that you use this analogy in a thread talking about a BSD licensed compiler (clang) that Apple wrote, and then fully open sourced more freely than the competition..

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BitZtream]

What? I'm guessing you don't work in embedded because GCC sucks on every embedded platform I use. GCC is what chip makers port to their chips first because its easy since the majority of the work is done by someone else, but its a shitty compiler and you want something else as soon as possible.

I don't know anyone who uses GCC for actual production work anymore except Linux distros.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, I mean, if companies like Apple weren't forced to give back their changes, they'd never do it. I mean, they're known the world over for never giving back to open source.

Wait, what's that, they wrote and BSD licensed clang? Well I'll be...

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Our group uses it because it is the only linux based compiler available for some of our targets. We use clang for everything else.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[smittyoneeach]

So maybe there are multiple motives and strategies behind licensing, and the GPL + BSD ecosystems are stronger than either would be in isolation.
I realize that part of the advertising going on is beating up everyone who doesn't agree with Teh One True Way, but still. . .

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this sentiment but you also have to conciser the number of ideas, projects and companies that never even leave the ground because they aren't willing to entertain the idea of including GPL licensed code because it means they would have to open up the source of their entire project. I think this is a point that most devs that defend GPL to the death fail to conciser.
GPL is a giant viscous legal thorn bush for ANY developer who has ANY reason they can't or don't want to release the source of their code and this potentially limits the progress of society just as much as a lack of open sorce libraries does.

I mean, I'm allowed to use gpl code for private projects but nothing that could actually have a decent chance of supporting my cost of living because even through I have a bunch of novel and useful ideas for software, they would be poached and re-released a month after I made a switch to the GPL license because first mover advantage means absolutely nothing in the software engineering world unless you have millions of dollars to spend of marketing or a way of securing the redistribution of your ideas like closed source (or maybe the day I can finally afford a patent).

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[maxwell demon]

Would they have BSD-licensed clang if there had not been the competing GPLed GCC? Who knows ...

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I work on embedded firmware every day with GCC. No problems. And that's on production code in large projects, across several arches - PPC, MIPS, ARM, ARM Cortex. GCC has had occasional failed/bad releases but all and all it is pretty good stuff. For every person that doesn't like GCC, there is a person that thinks it is okay.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL guarantees that if you have access to the binary you have access to the source. BSD/etc do not. In other words: BSD gives you the "freedom" to restrict others freedom. That isn't something people on the free software front consider positive.

Maybe it's you who should get over the fact rms believes in free software. You're entitled to your opinion, he's entitled to his. It isn't like he's pointing a free 3D-printed gun to your face and forcing you to write GPL'd code to extend emacs.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent up.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[caseih]

It all depends on your definition of freedom. I don't believe Linux would have the diversity of corporate backing without the GPL. The GPL is what allows IBM, Google, RedHat, and other heavy weights the freedom to collaborate for mutual benefit while still being competitors. Every contributor and developer operates on an equal legal footing with the GPL. The BSD works fine for many people, and for companies, like Apple. But Apple definitely is not collaborating on core OS X proper with other companies. Apple releases some of their core code under the BSD, true, but they aren't worried about it being used against them in competing products. This opinion is not necessarily mine; I have heard this from others who are involved with Linux development. Whatever the cause the amount of collaboration surrounding Linux has enabled it to go places BSD-based unixes just aren't going, like embedded devices, tablets, etc.

Anyway, as they say, different strokes for different folks. Your opinion is nor more valid or invalid than any other one. And you're right about the fact that in a perfect world intentions would always be honored without formal documents and copyrights. I think the GPL states that very fact.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

We shouldn't have to depend on that kind of goodwill from a company that might one day be motivated to limit the freedom of users...

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[pe1rxq]

I don't know which platforms you use, but I am guessing they suck in general.
For all platforms I use gcc is just fine.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[pe1rxq]

You are trying to sell the wrong thing.
Software is not scarce, the only way to sell it like it is scarce is by artificially making it so. That is what closed source software (or like you mentioned patents) do.

Making mony with GPL licensed code is not that hard, (many others are doing it), but you have to sell the thing that is truly scarce: Your time and knowledge.
Have them pay you to make it or improve it, or sell support.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[TheRealMindChild]

BSD = "I don't care WHAT the hell you do with this code"

GPL = "You better give some something back buddy if you want to use this"

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends,

GCC is mostly 'alright' on sane architectures. But tools like IAR really do better (in code space optimization mostly, optimization for speed is comparable). This doesn't matter if you buy a microcontroller with 2KB rom, but for chip development where every byte has some cost it makes the price of the compile instantly uninportant.

Re: RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Gpl3

Apple was using Gcc until the license limited XCode.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the old days, parent would've been quickly dispatched to -1 hell. Today, with the Instant Gratification/file sharing/Stack Overflow pasting generation of Slashdot mods, things are different.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

Actually, no. You may use GPL'd code any way you like (that's freedom 0) and share with others (freedom 2). You can likewise modify the software any way you like (freedom 1). And all this time, you need not release source code. The condition to release the source only kicks in with freedom to distribute your changes (freedom 3), so only when there is a third person involved with your derivative you have to grant them the same freedoms you've been given by the original author.
In fact, this was a problem with SaaS: You could've modified free software, and run it in the back on your servers, and say that you're simply providing a service to the end user, and since he's not getting the modified program, he doesn't get to have its source either. This is what AGPL is designed to address, and thus it's mostly used for web software. So with AGPL, as soon as you use a program, whether you have a copy, or are executing it online, you get access to the source.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

None of those are free. Those are slave licenses. If you want to work for free for a multination, you are welcome to it. But you certainly are not free.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[martin-boundary]

On the contrary, that point is exactly *why* we GPL advocates advocate it. We don't want to enable companies which have no intention whatsoever to be part of the community. They're free to do everything themselves, and good luck to them. But giving them a leg up to get off the ground just so they can be selfish assholes with their ideas? Why should we? And yes, sharing your *ideas* and *implementations* is what we mean by being part of the community. If this isn't for you, then don't let the door hit you on the way out, thanks.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[mark-t]

Neither the BSD nor the GPL remove (not can they remove) the aspect that copyright requires that a person must get permission from the original copyright holder if they are creating a derivative work of something copyrighted. In that light, both the BSD and GPL licenses essentially state that everyone who adheres to the terms of the license is free to create derivative works, thereby effectively granting such permission... but still only to people who adhere to the terms of the license.

Of course, the terms of the BSD license are pretty lax in comparison to the GPL... the former being not much beyond keeping the copyright notices in header files intact, while the latter license requires that the derivative work be released under the same license.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're mixing up GCC and codewarrior.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[ejr]

No, Chris Latner started clang while at UIUC. Apple hired him to continue.

On the flip side, there would be *no* free Objective C compiler had gcc used a non-copyleft license. Apple (well, NeXT, now better considered Apple-in-exile) tried to run around the GNU GPL but failed. They were forced to release the source, leading to gobjc. Note that gobjc has not been able to keep up with Apple's Objective C and C++ changes *because* of Apple's switch to an LLVM-based system. Also, note that previous Apple animosity against the GPL was not entirely technical.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL is emphatically "not an option" for most of companies.

(And I'm not talking about security through obscurity, but rather "we don't have the right to release the source to most of our stuff, so the GPL is poison.")

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[loonycyborg]

So called 'permissive licenses' are a joke. Clauses in them are utterly useless. While GPL aims to prevent the use of copyright for destructive purposes. If such prevention is unneeded for various reasons then you're better off skipping 'permissive' licenses in favor of WTFPL which at least doesn't pretend to be something serious.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

The only freedom that BSD/etc have that GPL does not is the freedom to completely fuck over your users. And no, that is not a "freedom" I want you to have, you fucking dog shit.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG

Look at the email for the very first clang commit.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the counter argument to "Freedom to kill"... ...I got the Freedom to live and that's essentially what freedom is basically about, sure nothing is stopping you from forking GCC and rebrand it as ACC (Awful C Compiler) technically, but if you're caught you can get sued, the BSD license essentially makes the project "go ahead, take my work and try fiddling with it if you dare", it actually challenges/gives the developers responsibility on now understanding/managing the code and creating new features.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[immaterial]

No, Chris Latner started clang while at UIUC. Apple hired him to continue.

Totally false. Chris Lattner started LLVM while at UIUC. Apple hired him in 2005 to continue LLVM, using GCC as the front-end. Apple didn't create Clang until approximately 2 years later (open-sourced in mid-2007), as they realized GCC wasn't adequate for their needs (one particular point being GCC moving to GPL3, another being the monolithic and unweildy GCC codebase).

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[jo_ham]

They would;t have written it in the first place if GCC hadn't gone GPLv3.

Up until that point they were distributing GCC as their main compiler with Xcode, and used it to build OS X itself.

With the arrival of GPLv3, designed to shut them (and others, like Tivo) out, they had no choice but to move away from GCC. They either had to use a pre-existing compiler (potentially expensive to licence) or write their own, hence LLVM and Clang.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[jo_ham]

The only freedom that BSD/etc have that GPL does not is the freedom to completely fuck over your users. And no, that is not a "freedom" I want you to have, you fucking dog shit.

A representative of the GPL, ladies and gentlemen.

"Anyone who doesn't like the GPL is dog shit". Pretty much sums up RMS' position succinctly at any rate.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[evil_aaronm]

I don't make my living off of it, but gcc on my AVR stuff has worked pretty well. No complaints here.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[phantomfive]

I can tell you, I've branched an open source project before, fixed some bugs, and released it for my company without merging back the changes. Why? Because my boss felt it would be a competitive advantage. So every once in a while I did a merge. No big deal, the software community at large lost, but I got paid.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[phantomfive]

GPL is a giant viscous legal thorn bush for ANY developer who has ANY reason they can't or don't want to release the source of their code

Well yeah, actually, that is the point.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, like Gosling "borrowed" code from Emacs, distributed the result and then sent cease and desist letters to Stallman for distributing the result?

Stallman had to rewrite Emacs from scratch to make it Gosling-clean. He did that, and then he wrote the GPL. It turns out that now everybody else is having a hissyfit whenever he blocks the world trying to route around mandatory software freedom for software put under his auspices.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[maccodemonkey]

Would they have BSD-licensed clang if there had not been the competing GPLed GCC? Who knows ...

There was no competition. Apple was a GCC user, distributor, and contributor until GPLv3. Apple never opposed open source compilers, in fact they're in favor of them because they don't have the staff on hand to write a finely optimized compiler themselves. The problem was the restrictions that would have been placed on them with GPLv3.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

On the flip side, there would be *no* free Objective C compiler had gcc used a non-copyleft license

It is not possible to prove that either way. It would not have been handed down perhaps, and *maybe* noone would have cared enough or been paid to do it, but Apple's is not the only Objective C compiler, and anyone can write one at any time.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[tlhIngan]

RMS knows that (and has made statements to that effect): GPL exists precisely because it's not a perfect world.
While you may call it a freedom, "freedom" to kill would not be a beneficial one.
Speaking metaphorically, that's what BSD license grants you: A way to murder free software in the black hole of proprietary software.
Do companies contribute back? Sure, some do, some of the things. But everything else is competition.
And therein lies the real difference: GPL is against proprietary software, it aims to provide free software to everyone. BSD isn't and doesn't.
Kinda like free vs open.
TL;DR: No.

You know what? EVERY GPL advocate says "Companies will steal your BSD code!!!!!! NOOOO!!! BAD!!!!"

But you know what really irks people? GPL does exactly the same thing. You see, GPL projects can take code from BSD projects, but that BSD project cannot take any improvements the GPL project makes.

In fact, GPL advocates do the same thing to BSD that they accuse "companies" of doing Even more hypocritically, they claim the GPL is superior because you cannot "close off" the code.

So, the "superiority" of GPL is that it does to BSD projects (closing off the code) what RMS claims "companies" do. And argues that it's the superior license.

So now the BSD guys can't even get the improvements back from an open-source project! What difference does it make if BSD allows companies AND open-source people to close off the code?

Funny how the GPL was created to "prevent" the very thing it does! Even worse, it's even iffier for the BSD project to accept contributions from the GPL project because that code could be GPL tainted. Companies giving back the code generally make it available under the same BSD license.

In fact, this very thing could be happening with GCC and LLVM - the LLVM guys make a fix for a problem, the GCC guys take it and fix GCC. Great, that's how open-source should work. But now, if the GCC guys fix a problem, the LLVM guys cannot take it, or even look at it (GPL taint). They may not even be able to take a patch. They have to independently fix it themselves.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for a little horse riding:

number of ideas, projects and companies that never even leave the ground because they aren't willing to entertain the idea of

.. paying the thousands of patent holders their due, setting the price of the product astronomical even if the product is a simple composite of things.
Patents are a

giant viscous legal thorn bush for ANY developer who has ANY reason they can't or don't want to release the source of their code[, or make a affordable, legally sound product for the market] and this potentially limits the progress of society

Added somethings for you.

first mover advantage means absolutely nothing in the software engineering world unless you have millions of dollars to spend of marketing or a way of securing the redistribution of your ideas like closed source (or maybe the day I can finally afford a patent).

Software was not meant to be capital heavy industry. That said, even in the physical product side, your are often in the situation where at the very moment you come to the market, or are in the end phase of development, you already might have several competitors. Innovating around the combination of physical product and software gives a lot better change of protecting your invention in all of the potential markets.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[cheesybagel]

A BSD licensed compiler that an University of Illinois student wrote, which eventually got hired by Apple to continue working on it in order to replace the GCC compiler Apple used to use before.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[cheesybagel]

Sure. Ask the Wine developers why they switched from BSD to LGPL.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

> On the contrary, that point is exactly *why* we GPL advocates advocate it. We don't want to enable companies which have no intention whatsoever to be part of the community.
You're a subset of a community, and you don't speak for all of it. So fuck off and take autotools with you.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

> The GPL guarantees that if you have access to the binary you have access to the source.
No it doesn't. Counterexample: you find an old binary which is no longer distributed by the entity which originally provisioned the binary.

The GPL means you may have the basis of a legal challenge to request specific performance of provision of the source to you, other related damages or restitution &c. Any requirement to ship source will not survive unincorporation either, and it will not defeat any overriding international or local statutes or treaties.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

> The GPL is what allows IBM, Google, RedHat, and other heavy weights the freedom to collaborate for mutual benefit while still being competitors.
It's funny that no-one identifies this as a problem. Massive corporates have been able to take a hugely complex technology stack, commoditize it, outsource technology staff, and entrench their disproportionate political and economic influence. Competition faces high barrier to entries or is bought out. Technology is disrespected and deskilled, and progress in fundamentals such as OS, language development is dead in favour of building layers of shit on top of very simple concepts.

So ty for killing the possibility for thousands of engineers of e.g. working on an OS team, or developing a new way of building higher level applications that isn't just a compile to javascript.

Meanwhile we still pay for "specialist knowledge" from lawyers, plumbers etc who don't expose at every opportunity the magic behind the curtains, or special tricks - e.g. they get a special vocal sound from one particular model of mic that they cover with bubble wrap - and then expect people to pay for their "support" of the documentation of those special secrets.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[maxwell demon]

Except that originally they made their Objective C front end proprietary, violating the GPL. Only after that license violation was pointed out to them by the FSF, they released it, as otherwise they would have to have do all the work of writing a compiler back end. Yes, they were never against taking code. However without the GPL, they might never have given code.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

But Apple definitely is not collaborating on core OS X proper with other companies.

And it shows. Holy fuck the XNU kernel and HFS+ is a trainwreck.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

They may have released the compiler front end, they never released their Objective-C runtime library making the code worthless and hard to maintain - apple would publish their updates as required without any of the effort necessary to stay compatible with anything but their own non-GPL runtime.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[maxwell demon]

They may not even be able to take a patch.

If the patch comes from the original developer of the fix, they certainly can take it, because the original developer owns the copyright of the patch and therefore is not bound by the GPL (other than if he patches GCC, he must distribute that patched version of GCC under the GPL; but a patch for LLVM obviously is not a derived work of GCC).

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[maxwell demon]

Nice ad hominem. Which is usually the last resort if you have no further factual arguments. I leave the conclusion to the reader.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Megol]

Hello Mr Covard, guess I've have to commend you to not posting beta bullshit however your point is still bullshit: BSD doesn't restrict anything. If the code wasn't BSD licensed you wouldn't have any right to it to begin with. And that's the facts, your idea is some kind of religious one where one by default have all rights and the BSD licence removes that.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Alef]

Another advantage of keeping involved and contributing back is that you get to influence the direction in which the upstream project goes (if the maintainers aren't too obstinate). And through that you make better use of the work produced by people you don't have to pay. Also, contributing a patch back lets you exploit the quality assurance provided by the project, be it explicit or implicit in the fact that your patch will be used and tested in practice by a lot of more people.

I'd say it makes business sense to contribute back to BSD projects for anything that isn't the core technology of your company. If I run a hypothetical company that makes, let's say, raytracers for CGI effects, the advantages I have by keeping fixes in a logging framework or networking library to myself are very small. Contributing back gains me more. Those things aren't what my company is supposed to be good at anyway.

If we would be using a BSD licensed raytracing library, on the other hand, then it would be a different matter. But if you are a company whose business case is developing commercial raytracers, you'd better be far ahead of what's available through BSD licensed software in terms of raytracing, or you should ask yourself if you are in the right market. And if you have that expertise and it is what you use to compete, you would keep it in-house under any circumstances.

So I'd say (smart) companies contribute back whenever it's something that's outside of their core business, and otherwise not. So GPL or not doesn't really make a difference in regard to that -- it's not going to make a company give away what they use to compete, it only makes more companies stay away from your code. Then again, if that's what someone wants, as a matter of principle, then fair enough, it's their choice and I have nothing to say against it.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[jo_ham]

Nice ad hominem. Which is usually the last resort if you have no further factual arguments. I leave the conclusion to the reader.

Exactly. I see you noticed my point, which is why I posted logged in, replying to an AC comment doing exactly what you're pointing out so succinctly.

It's not strictly an ad hominem, since I merely restated the brave AC's point. I didn't call him names or question his intelligence. Although, I did compare his argument to RMS' classic argument for the GPL, so if you think that being compared to RMS is an ad hom then my point is even more fitting.

I leave the conclusion to the reader, when taking the whole thread, including the OP, into account.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Carewolf]

You know what? EVERY GPL advocate says "Companies will steal your BSD code!!!!!! NOOOO!!! BAD!!!!" But you know what really irks people? GPL does exactly the same thing. You see, GPL projects can take code from BSD projects, but that BSD project cannot take any improvements the GPL project makes.

So the GPL argument that BSD is bad because the code can be taken and relicensed is bad because BSD code can be taken and relicensed? I love your logic! :D

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Carewolf]

Would they have BSD-licensed clang if there had not been the competing GPLed GCC? Who knows ...

LLVM was not developed by Apple and is not an Apple project, so its license has nothing to do with them. And they do a have a proprietary fork of both clang and llvm that they use internally. The open source clang/llvm has much worse ARM and iOS support than the Apple version. They prefer to keep the open source version cripled rather than open source all of their improvments to it.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

If the first mover advantage means nothing, why should you get paid as if it does?

Your ideas have already occurred to others. Fuck your special-snowflake thinking. "The progress of society" is not what your concern is, you just want to line your pockets with the work of others. If the GPL is your excuse for why you can't do this, good.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[maccodemonkey]

They may have released the compiler front end, they never released their Objective-C runtime library making the code worthless and hard to maintain - apple would publish their updates as required without any of the effort necessary to stay compatible with anything but their own non-GPL runtime.

Fortunately, they don't have a monopoly on Obj-C runtimes.
http://www.gnustep.org/
http://www.cocotron.org/

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Megol]

Clang isn't LLVM. LLVM existed before Apple supported the project, Clang did not.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[electrosoccertux]

On the contrary, that point is exactly *why* we GPL advocates advocate it. We don't want to enable companies which have no intention whatsoever to be part of the community. They're free to do everything themselves, and good luck to them. But giving them a leg up to get off the ground just so they can be selfish assholes with their ideas? Why should we? And yes, sharing your *ideas* and *implementations* is what we mean by being part of the community. If this isn't for you, then don't let the door hit you on the way out, thanks.

hm I see your point, but i don't have a problem with enabling companies to be selfish.
You only exclude the entrepreneurs by being viral. The large companies will jump in and be selfish because they already have teams they can dedicate to being selfish and rolling their own if they want. They'll just use BSD or something.
The entrepreneurs create new technologies, so excluding them just kills new smaller markets that larger companies wouldn't have entered anyways.
Maybe it's not a big deal and maybe its good we get closed companies being forced to contribute. I know IMO having closed hardware that only runs NonFree software is lame.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anubis IV]

But giving them a leg up to get off the ground just so they can be selfish assholes with their ideas? Why should we?

Well, that's a matter of opinion, but many of us would hold that it's better for the ecosystem as a whole if you do.

There are two fundamentally different ways to look at this (with nuances coming later):
1) The greatest good comes from allowing anyone to stand on anyone's shoulders.
2) The greatest good comes from having more people scrambling to climb on top.

Even if you think that the two can coexist, there's still the question of which you believe will lead to the greatest good and whether or not you would temper it with other factors. You're clearly in the first camp, and that's fine. I certainly have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with the arrogance you seem to be displaying in the quote I provided, since the implication of your rhetorical question is that there isn't another way of looking at things. That's simply untrue.

In contrast to your beliefs, some of us believe that the greatest good comes from applying heavier selective pressure on the population of projects, and that that can only occur when they are capable of producing meaningful competitive edges over each other...something they cannot achieve when they are required to relinquish a good chunk of their advantage as soon as they use it. Without any pressure, the natural state of an ecosystem is homogeneity, which is death to innovation, disruption, and revolution.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting that projects licensed under the GPL lack any pressure or that the GPL results in homogeneity, nor am I even saying that it erases all competitive advantages, all of which I believe to be gross overstatements of its effects. But I am saying that an ecosystem centered around the GPL applies a weaker selective pressure on its members, along with all of the effects that stem from that, including less disruption, and that's something I find undesirable.

On the other side, and to continue the evolutionary analogy, a fully-proprietary ecosystem, while more competitive, would be like a community in which altruism did not exist: few would survive and the apex creatures could dominate over crowds of individuals. Modern evolutionary theory suggests that acts of altruism are present in more evolved animals because the gains for the community far outweigh the losses incurred by the individual, thus enabling communities to thrive where they might not have otherwise.

Open source licenses fill that role in software development. They make it possible for new projects to build on the experience of others, allow competing groups to pool their efforts so that they can displace an entrenched incumbent, and limit the amount of unnecessarily duplicated work between projects. But whereas the GPL limits selective pressure by removing competitive advantages, the BSD does not, making it more of an ideal choice for certain developers, including myself.

Is it for everyone? Certainly not, but please recognize that there are some people who have no problem sharing with "selfish assholes" in the interest of benefitting the developer community as a whole.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[martin-boundary]

Firstly, thank you for such a considered reply. I think you'll find, if you look through my comment history, that on my serious days whenever I comment on the BSD licence, I do appreciate the advantages of that license over the GPL for certain goals. While I personally always use the GPL for my projects, I don't advocate it for everything.

However, I think it is clear that the currency of the GPL community are ideas and implementations. These are the membership dues you pay to be part of, and considered to be part of, the community. It makes no sense to argue against this, as if it was perhaps a minor flaw in the license that can or should be remedied for the purpose of keeping commercial players in the club. Yes, it is a goal of the GPL community to grow, people such as RMS are very clear on that, but membership dues are required from all members - that is what limits the growth and so it should be.

I come from an academic background, and the history of science suggests strongly that progress requires full disclosure of ideas and methods. In the 17th century and before, scientists hid their methods, and hid their results. These were competitive advantages. People like Cardano kept jealously the secret of solving cubic equations - it was literally worth money, as there were circus competitions where people solved equations in front of an audience. Science made very little progress, and many ideas were lost, and many ideas were improperly evaluated and wrongly praised. Today, Science requires full disclosure, and scientists often disclose their work in progress years before it is fully completed. The rate of discoveries has skyrocketed, and the rate at which scientific advances are incorporated into society has too. No serious scientist would argue for hiding *anything* as a competitive advantage - if anything they would prefer to share trivial advances on the off chance that they can be viewed as having invented them. The lesson has been learned.

I view open source in this light. There are parts of the community which have learned the lesson and espouse full sharing of all "competitive advantages", and there are more primitive parts which do not agree. I call them primitive in the same way that I view 17th century scientists as primitive. They didn't know any better, and that was tragic. Many of their ideas and methods can't be used any more, but we remember them for their historical importance, at least sometimes.

I don't feel the need to convince you to choose the GPL, I choose it because any other license is just a waste. And I do expect those who join the community to pay their dues, because that is what grows the community's value, and allows it to thrive.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[twocows]

If you'd like a specific example, OpenBSD. They were recently facing major problems because none of the corporations that took from their project were willing to give back where it was needed most. Granted, monetary issues aren't something the GPL is going to solve, but I'm speaking more generally to the larger point of "corporations will give back when it suits their interest." At least in this case, it seems like most corporations that "took" from OpenBSD figured that it wasn't their problem, that someone else would give back and they could just reap the profits. And really, that's what ended up happening (I believe a rich user ended up stepping up and covering their electrical costs).

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BasilBrush]

And therein lies the real difference: GPL is against proprietary software, it aims to provide free software to everyone.

And is thus against programmers making a living from their coding.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BasilBrush]

I can tell you, I've branched an open source project before, fixed some bugs, and released it for my company without merging back the changes. Why? Because my boss felt it would be a competitive advantage. So every once in a while I did a merge. No big deal, the software community at large lost, but I got paid.

The software community hasn't lost anything. They simply haven't gained access to the work your employer paid for. And why should they? Especially if your employer's hunch is right that other's might use it to compete with him.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BasilBrush]

We shouldn't have to depend on that kind of goodwill from a company that might one day be motivated to limit the freedom of users...

We don't. The code will always be free to use at the state it was when the company chose to stop contributing. That can't be taken away. Now if no one else can be bothered to pick it up from there to continue developing it, then no one has room to complain that they aren't getting any more updated versions.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[phantomfive]

The software community hasn't lost anything. They simply haven't gained access to the work your employer paid for. And why should they?

Well, everyone can make their own choices about licenses, I don't oppose that; but people should be informed about the consequences of their choices.

In this case, if the software had been GPL, we would have given back the bug fixes, since it wouldn't have involved releasing all our software or anything, and the advantage of using it would outweigh the advantage of rewriting it (although we did consider that too). That was what I meant by 'community lost out.' I hope that clarifies things.

As long as people understand what will happen as a result of choosing the license they choose, then I'm happy with whatever. It's their work, they deserve to do with it what they want.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[exomondo]

The AGPL has the same problem that the GPLv2 has which was solved by the GPLv3, essentially Tivoization in which you can get access to the code but you can't necessarily make use of it and since you don't get the binary distribution or run it yourself you can never verify it anyway or verify that there isn't some other software involved at some point. That is always going to be fighting a losing battle because it is a case where end users want to do their computing on computers that they do not control and which do not belong to them.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking metaphorically, that's what BSD license grants you: A way to murder free software in the black hole of proprietary software.

Why can the GPL crowd never make their argument effectively without extrapolating to idiotic proportions. There is no "murder" you fool and you cannot take free software and make it proprietary, you can only create a proprietary derivative and if it is significantly better than the original version and all free derivatives such that users prefer it even though it is proprietary then free software has failed anyway, if it cannot win over the end user in quality and it being "free" is of no value to the end user then who even cares about it?

But let us look at reality: When has this ever happened? In the nearly 3 decades of the existence of the BSD license when has it been used in this way?

Do companies contribute back? Sure, some do, some of the things. But everything else is competition.

For fuck sake even the most notorious company for litigiousness and rabid protection of "intellectual property" contributed back to its direct competitor and worked with them and the free software/open source community to produce and continue to develop Webkit and it wasnt because they had the free software world view forced on them.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BasilBrush]

In this case, if the software had been GPL, we would have given back the bug fixes, since it wouldn't have involved releasing all our software or anything, and the advantage of using it would outweigh the advantage of rewriting it (although we did consider that too).

There's no reason for to to be any different with GPL. The GPL only requires you give access to source to people who you supply the binaries to. In your case, you say it was only used within the company, so there would be no requirement to distribute the source outside the company.

There's no reason why your bosses decision would be any different with the GPL, so long as he wasn't misinformed about the nature of the license.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[phantomfive]

There's no reason for to to be any different with GPL. The GPL only requires you give access to source to people who you supply the binaries to.

That is true.

In your case, you say it was only used within the company, so there would be no requirement to distribute the source outside the company.

We distributed it to every single one of our customers. Sorry there was some confusion there.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

Considering that AGPL(v3, the FSF version) is based on GPLv3 and features the same anti-TiVoization article (nr. 6), please explain why you think it's still subject to TiVoization, why does ownership of the machine matter? Do you think that the license cannot compel the service provider to allow upload of modified software? Thanks.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

This would be so if it were a fact that only proprietary software is profitable, which is not the case.
A case can be made for "against making profit by subjugating users", though.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BasilBrush]

Name 3 examples. And it has to be profit from programming, and not support. Not that I'm saying you can't find three examples, but my suggestion is that they are fringe, niche cases, not a model that can keep significant numbers of programmers earning a living.

A case can be made for "against making profit by subjugating users", though.

"subjugating"? You guys are insane. Working hard to make a product, and then selling it is how virtually all the things you rely on get made, from your home to your transport to your food.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[exomondo]

Considering that AGPL(v3, the FSF version) is based on GPLv3 and features the same anti-TiVoization article (nr. 6), please explain why you think it's still subject to TiVoization

I didn't say it was Tivoization I said it is the element of it that you cannot necessarily make use of the code. I can get Tivo's code and theoretically use Tivo's code in compatible system if one existed, but I can't replace the code on the Tivo with my own modified version, just like I could use the code from a cloud-based render farm service but I can't replace the code on that render farm with my own modified version.

why does ownership of the machine matter?

Because if the target platform is custom hardware and you own it you can theoretically run software on it, if the platform is custom hardware and you don't own it then how are you going to run software on it? Can you run software on my computer? No.

Do you think that the license cannot compel the service provider to allow upload of modified software?

I don't see anything in the license that does that.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

On the flip side, there would be *no* free Objective C compiler had gcc used a non-copyleft license.

Don't be stupid. Apple (nee NeXT) did not invent Objective-C, and there were always other Objective-C compilers. One of them is an existence proof that you are wrong: quite a long time ago, David Stes wrote the Portable Object Compiler (POC), a GPL Obj-C front end for GCC or any other C compiler. This is not the same thing as the Obj-C front end in mainline GCC, it's a completely independent program which translates Obj-C source to plain C and then compiles the C code with GCC. (You can substitute any other standards compliant C compiler for GCC, and IIRC it has been done before, GCC was just Stes' main target back when he was actively working on POC.)

Granted, Stes seems to have been motivated to write POC based on kooky grudges dating back to when NeXT forked the language from what Stes considers to be the One True Objective-C. NeXT then pissed him off even more by becoming the dominant dialect, and capped it all off by eventually acquiring the rights to Objective-C from Stepstone, the company founded by Brad Cox (Obj-C's inventor). If you want to see some crazy usenet flamewars, search for Stes' archived posts on comp.lang.objective-c, where he spent many years obsessively trying to police all conversations about Stuff He Didn't Like in the NeXT/Apple dialect, attempting to promote POC as the only true Objective-C compiler, and so on.

But I digress. Point is that there were no legal or other barriers put in his way. IIRC, Stes has even been known to borrow features he deems acceptable from the NeXT / Apple dialect, with nary a hint of legal action on Apple's part. (This is probably because Apple doesn't actually want the language to be proprietary. Wider adoption could only help them. I've seen Apple employees state that unofficially Apple would love to be involved in international and open standardization of the language akin to C89, C99 etc., but as long as they're the only ones interested there's really no point.)

Note that gobjc has not been able to keep up with Apple's Objective C and C++ changes *because* of Apple's switch to an LLVM-based system.

What exactly are you trying to say here? That's merely a consequence of next to nobody stepping up to maintain it after Apple left, which is a consequence of next to nobody caring about Objective-C outside of Apple. It has nothing to do with the LLVM project itself.

Also, note that previous Apple animosity against the GPL was not entirely technical.

Nobody ever said Apple's animosity for GPLv3 was technical at all? It's always been quite clear that they were fine with v2, but v3 was unworkable for them.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

What you describe is precisely TiVoization. TiVo didn't deny code (that would be against GPL2, not just v3), they denied modified software to be run on their system. The purpose of GPLv3's section 6 is to compel them to enable and instruct the user on how to install it on the system. The same clause exists in AGPL.
The question remains: Does not owning hardware circumvent the clause?

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

Name 3 examples.

RedHat (the biggest commercial Linux contributor this year), source of revenue: Support and training
Intel (the second biggest commercial Linux contributor this year), source of revenue: Selling hardware
Mozilla (the FLOSS reference project), source of revenue: Partnership with Google, donations, and now ads
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/02/04/1628236/whos-writing-linux-these-days and own knowledge of the companies
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/02/12/0338239/mozilla-to-show-sponsored-links-to-first-time-firefox-users

Not that I'm saying you can't find three examples, but my suggestion is that they are fringe, niche cases, not a model that can keep significant numbers of programmers earning a living.

Well that seemed to be the implication. If everyone started selling services of and around coding instead of compiled code, people would pay. Like: here's money to do feature X that I need. You know, contract work. They're just not used to it, we're set back by the proprietary practices.

And it has to be profit from programming

Usually, coders earn a salary programming. That is, the code is not sold, but a functional "product" (really, binaries), the money just percolates to developers. So the same constraint applied to proprietary software would rule out most companies, and interpreted to your slant, would sitll eliminate Google. Therefore I've ignored it since it's not important to getting paid. The only ones who are technically selling code per-se are free-lancers (cf. Google Summer of Code) and in-house programmers (cf. ESR's Cathedral vs Bazaar, where he claims there are more of those, than those working on "products"). Simply put, doesn't matter if a certain company or an individual pays you for a product or a service.

"subjugating"? You guys are insane. Working hard to make a product, and then selling it is how virtually all the things you rely on get made, from your home to your transport to your food.

Thanks for the insult. It's not about the product being sold, it's about user not being able to use it for "whatever purpose", share it "to help his neighbor", modify it "to suit his needs". And distribute his changes. Don't you even know the four freedoms? Software is not physical goods that get spent, it can be copied. It's fundamentally different. There just needs to be a paradigm shift in the minds of people. Hence GPL:

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[exomondo]

they denied modified software to be run on their system.

Ah but it is not their system, you bought it, it's your system. Now I understand the case where software is licensed rather than sold but hardware is sold, not licensed and you can do whatever you want with it, but of course if it is restricted by proprietary software - say a bootloader - that is licensed rather than sold then you may have a hard time doing that. Though that does not mean you couldn't replace the ROM containing the bootloader because it is your hardware, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth.

The purpose of GPLv3's section 6 is to compel them to enable and instruct the user on how to install it on the system. The same clause exists in AGPL. The question remains: Does not owning hardware circumvent the clause?

Yes, because it relates to a "User Product" which a Tivo is but - for example - a cloud-based render farm is not.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BasilBrush]

So that's only 2 example projects. With the money largely coming from support, or being told what to do (contract programming), rather than creating an original product that you believe in and think other people will like.

It's niche, and it's unappealing work. No thanks.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

If you insist on equating "earning money by programming" with "selling binaries", there's nothing much I can do.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

Hmm... I'll keep an eye on any FSF-related explanations. Thanks for the discussion.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[BasilBrush]

You've got the wrong idea if that's what you think I did. "Selling binaries" is no more earning money by programming than "support" is. That's one reason why most indies delegate that task to app stores these days.

Again, my position is this. In practice GPL software leaves few opportunities to be paid to program. There are openings in large companies that adapt big projects like Linux to their purposes, or write drivers. But they are relatively few, in number and variety. And there are openings in non-software companies that need internal business software. They are more common, but mostly dull.

Heck virtually all GPL projects are copies of existing software. The two you mention: Linux is a Unix copy. Mozilla is a me-too browser.

Try doing an innovative project that interests you, and will be of value to many other people. Doing it in the GPL world will mean you have trouble putting food on the table. In the commercial world, you make your living with it.

The GPL is good for non-creators that want free stuff. For creative programmers it is suicide.

Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL

[paxcoder]

Which binary did you sell?

Cooperation

[binarylarry]

I bet this works great for the GCC devs.

Unless they're going to work under the BSD license, LLVM will be screwed over because they aren't going to include GPL code into LLVM.

Re:Cooperation

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out his disdain for "open source software", which I've always thought of as an expression of his ego and/or NIH, since it seems like a generalization of his basic idea. His followers, though, probably explain that away as being consistent with his ideology of "software freedom".

BTW, it's fascinating to me that someone like RMS who has been a pretty successful marketer of such a strange ideology could do so without bathing. Then again, maybe his acolytes - who are mostly naive high school and college students, as best I can tell - find that sort of thing appealing.

Re:Cooperation

[sjames]

Isn't that what they chose by selecting the BSD license? t least it won't disappear into a black hole where they can't even look at the improvements like when their code gets used in a proprietary program.

Of course, since they are different code bases they would probably need their own implementation anyway.

FUCK BETA!

[zlaxdot]

registered now, to scream FUCK BETA! ( and bye bye Feb 10 2 4 ever ) tear in my eye,,) lurked since Grandpa was young and Unicorns roared free! lurked because there was nothing to add, it was beautiful, full of god comments and knowledge, i pointed my browser to /. because of that,. this is ok @ random porn site,, or hippster out of touch whattevva,, NOT "News for nerds, stuff that matters". We have reached a point where technological evolution and progress isn't important anymore because everything has to be dumbed down so even the biggest fucking retard out there can use it and that's the number one priority these days, everything else barely matters. FUCK BETA!

Re:FUCK BETA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to filter these comments out? Because I'm starting to get *really* tired of them.

Re:FUCK BETA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep...another bad AC shill. Tim is that you?

The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

As times change, so do the needs of people. These days, we don't need the GPL. We also don't need the Slashdot beta site.

Both the GPL and the Slashdot beta site have come to exemplify the tyranny we sometimes see within the open source world.

The GPL purports to bring "freedom" by going out of its way to restrict the freedom of people who wish to distribute modified, closed-source versions of GPL licensed software.

Likewise, the Slashdot beta is supposedly "better", but in reality it's a steaming pile of dogshit that's worse than the existing site in every single possible way. Yet it's forced upon us randomly these days, and soon it'll be our only "choice", once the current site is gone.

Open source users, be they individuals or community projects (like FreeBSD) or companies (like Apple) have spoken: they want freedom for everybody. That means no more GPL. Instead, software is best released under the BSD or MIT licenses. The BSD and MIT licenses maximize the freedom of everybody, with the only restrictions being nearly inconsequential. That's very different from the GPL, which in its failed attempt to bring some quaint idea of "freedom" ends up limiting the overall degree of freedom for everybody.

Slashdot users have spoken, too. We've very plainly said that we've had enough of the goddamn beta site. It can't be salvaged; it needs to go. It's a failed software project, and it needs to be discarded completely like failed software projects should be.

GCC is eventually going to die out, probably sooner than most would expect, because of its freedom-limiting license.

Slashdot, too, is obviously on the path to death. The beta will kill the Slashdot community.

It's a shame that a once-important project like GCC will likely soon die out, and it's a shame that a once-important community gathering place like Slashdot will likely soon die out. Both could have been preventable; GCC by ditching the GPL in favor of a truly free software license, and Slashdot by killing the beta project and site right away.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that went full retard. Your analogy with the GPL is fundamentally flawed, and stupid. I was going to explain how you can create a valid analogy with exactly the opposite statement, but meh, not worth it.

At least we agree with something: FUCK BETA

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[paxcoder]

What do you think the purpose of copyleft (of which GPL is just a manifestation) was? The problems it adressed persist.
Now let me address the "freedoms" you're defending. There's always the quote "your freedom to wave your fist ends where my nose begins", but I'm not going to argue that in this case - let's assume users don't have freedoms like FSF asserts. Let's listen to you and focus on corporate freedoms:
You're saying people should have the "freedom" to leech, because this technically means the least amount of restrictions on a code. But in fact, what you're really defending is the right of authors of derivatives to restrict what their users can do. And you know what? I agree that they have that freedom: They built it, they should be able to do with it whatever they want. But the dissonance in your opinion is this: The author of the original piece of code which they built on also has the same right! So if you're going to defend people who impose restrictions that hurt end-users, why attack those that use the same right in the purpose of maximizing the freedoms of those same end-users?
So there are restrictions in both stories, just that BSD is asocial and GPL isn't: BSD says "do what thou wilt" and that inevitably favors the bully. Mind you, the bully (=the warlord in the case of anarchy) is going to impose his own rules. GPL says instead: Fair play rules are valid for everyone.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you make this so complicated?

Let's crunch the numbers. We'll give +1 whenever a license gives a particular user more freedom, and -1 whenever it takes away freedom. We have two users (the author and the user) and two licenses (the GPL and the BSD).

The GPL gives the author freedom (author: +1), but it denies some freedom of the user (user: -1).

The BSD license gives the author freedom (author: +1), and it gives the user the same freedom (user: +1).

So the GPL's score comes out to 0. Any freedom it gives to the author is taken from the user.

And the BSD license's score is +2. It gives everybody a maximal level of freedom.

Say whatever you want, but the numbers speak for themselves. The BSD license increases freedom for everybody. The GPL increases it for the author at the expense of everybody else. Therefore, the BSD license is the truly free license, while the GPL encourages tyranny.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. After a decade of the same argument appearing time after time on this site, your post will finally set it, at least for the users who stay on.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[pe1rxq]

By your logic the BSD license encourages tyranny when compared to the public domain.

So far you have only proven that you can add and subtract the number 1.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the stupidest things i've read this week.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Arker]

Except that you did it wrong.

BSD gives the author freedom, but screws the user. (1-1=0)
GP gives the author freedom, and preserves it for the user also. (1+1=2)

Really, this is simple math, there is no excuse for such a fundamental mistake.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL purports to bring "freedom" by going out of its way to restrict the freedom of people who wish to use others people's code however they wish and not give anything back.

There, FTFY. HAND.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

I must be seeing things, how exactly does the GPL grant the author the same freedom as BSD or any similar license?

Also it's quite clear that everyone here is just talking about how the licenses are on paper, since otherwise every single code with BSD License in it that has contributors would be dead and forgot because "no one is forced to contribute back".

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

All I know is the GPL says I must live in a cardboard box and feed my kids from a dumpster.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[epyT-R]

You can't be serious. BSD license is fine for people who largely don't care if their code is forked, patched, and closed, then used to compete against the original author or the community at large. While this gives the person doing this more freedom initially, it has the potential to deny the relevance of, and long term interest in, the original open project in the future. The end result is one less open source project in the market. This attack vector, used by aggressive vendors who want to kill open competition, is what the GPL was intended to prevent. In one sense BSD is one step closer to public domain than GPL, but it doesn't protect the community relevance, market value, and continued program source access, which is a loss of freedom for everyone else.

The GPL prevents this by providing legal guarantees for the freedom to tinker with that program indefinitely. The code and any modifications to it remain available to anyone because those who publicly distribute changed binaries must also publicly distribute source patches. With proprietary licenses you pay money for binaries (source, sometimes). With GPL code, your 'payment' for using it is giving any user the code you've added (if any) when requested. There's nothing viral or damaging about any of this because the answer is the same: if you don't like the license, ask the authors if they are willing to give you an alternative (since they still own the copyright), or don't use the code. If it's a library under LGPL then you can dynamically link against it without sharing the code that links to it. Most GPL libraries are LGPL now, so that's not an issue either.

The GCC guys have made it clear that programs compiled with gcc do not have to be GPL, and it's used in countless projects, both proprietary and OSS, for over two decades. I doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Immerman]

First off the author always has the freedom to do whatever they want (assuming they haven't transferred copyright to someone else), the license only applies to *other* people. If you're the author of a derivative work and feel you should get to claim credit for the whole of "your" work, then by all means feel free to replicate the no doubt trivial amount of labor put into all those libraries you used.

BSD grants essentially unlimited freedom to developers directly downstream, but makes no attempt to preserve those freedoms for anyone further downstream.
GPL grants somewhat restricted freedoms to downstream developers, but in doing so they ensure that everyone further downstream continues to get the same freedoms.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[maccodemonkey]

Except that you did it wrong.

BSD gives the author freedom, but screws the user. (1-1=0)
GP gives the author freedom, and preserves it for the user also. (1+1=2)

Really, this is simple math, there is no excuse for such a fundamental mistake.

Unless I ignore the Gnu implementation because of my commercial interests so the user never sees an implementation.

So we go back to Gnu = 0.

Seriously. I've seen projects and implementations totally scuttled over GPL. We would have LOVED to support the standard and commit code back, but the restrictions on our own code were unsustainable. So we went with BSD alternatives instead.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

just that BSD is asocial and GPL isn't: BSD says "do what thou wilt" and that inevitably favors the bully. Mind you, the bully (=the warlord in the case of anarchy) is going to impose his own rules. GPL says instead: Fair play rules are valid for everyone.

Have to take issue with this. You make a fair point, but it is full of hyperbole and only half the story.

What do you think legal systems are if not asocial warlords and bullies who impose their own rules on the populace, only for their own gain?

If you know anything about governments, they inevitably favor the bully as well, that is the nature of them.

Two sides of the same coin.

Mind you, the warlord bully has branded things that benefit him "legal" and things that don't benefit the state "illegal" but that is just marketing; "legal" just means "backed by guns and money" so in either case it is bowing down to a warlord and hoping they keep things "fair" for everyone.

GPL says instead: Fair play rules are valid for everyone.

Devil's advocate: BSD leaves you alone to protect yourself and defend your turf how you like, GPL relies on empowering an existing bully under the theory that will stop other bullies, and that empowering the "legal" bully is a lesser evil.

Rhetorical question: What do you call an infinite number of arbitrary legal systems, always at war with each other, spying on each other endlessly, if not complete and utter anarchy?

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you, the bully (=the warlord in the case of anarchy) is going to impose his own rules. GPL says instead: Fair play rules are valid for everyone.

Should also mention that not everywhere cares about copyright, so "valid for everyone" is a myth and doesn't mean anything outside the sphere of "countries that happen to honor such things at this arbitrary point in time, which can change at a whim."

The only way to impose the GPL everywhere is to perpetually have a legal system that is universally recognized, which would imply a system that destroys or envelops all other systems. This is no different than imposing copyright everywhere, so the GPL is not unique in that regard.

Good or bad I will not say, but their is a certain amount of destruction involved, people aren't going to just give up their culture and history and way of life without a fight.

"Fair play rules are valid for everyone" seems like you left out quite a few people that just didn't make your list of people that matter I guess, because they live differently than you do or were born somewhere else.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Zontar The Mindless]

That's odd, the GPL tells me pretty plainly that I get to have a nice flat, eat, and make my child-support payments, all while promoting freedom.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

> The author of the original piece of code which they built on also has the same right!
Fuck's sake.
1) He can have that right if he chooses to exercise that right. He can also have the right not to exercise it.
2) How long would this right continue? Perpetual copyright in a hash chain of derivative works?

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing viral or damaging about any of this because the answer is the same: if you don't like the license, ask the authors if they are willing to give you an alternative (since they still own the copyright), or don't use the code.

Mod this up; this is the same BSD or GPL or any other license.

In addition, an author who fully owns code (say they wrote it themselves) can release it under the GPL, but still have their private version going, or release the original code under any other license they want (without any contributions that were contributed to the GPL version of course).

GPL doesn't stop someone from keeping changes to themselves. It stops the GPL version of some codebase from disappearing, but there is no requirement or guarantee that the GPL is the original version and not just one version of the code that was licensed GPL while the original author also licensed (or not) the original code other ways.

GPL stops upstream *from the GPL version* from disappearing, but that is not necessarily the original upstream, nor is it necessarily the only licensed version of some code. It is just the GPL version.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Bert64]

Too much freedom gives a select few the ability to take away freedom from others...
The GPL works much like society, you sacrifice some freedom in order to ensure a reasonable level for everyone.

Without laws and someone to enforce them, people would be free to torture, murder and enslave each other, so while you'd have more freedom without laws it wouldn't last very long.
BSD code works much the same way, you have more freedom with the initial version but there's nothing to stop future versions offering you no freedom whatsoever.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Richard_at_work]

You are assuming everyone considers those four points to all have an equal value. - for example, is the GPLs "gives the author freedom" actually equal to the BSDLs "give the author freedom"? Not really, but yet you equate them....

So much wrong with your "simple math".

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[superwiz]

If only there was a system for measuring how much people are willing to give for what they give up or for they create... some token maybe that would the exchange countable and enumerable... so that all these "feed good" philosophies would not be based on what one person thinks the exchange rate should be for ideas, but on what all participants think the exchange rate should be for ideas.... some universal enumerative token... nah, can't happen.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Arker]

I am not actually doing that, no.

For instance 'gives the author freedom' was simply taking what the poster I replied to had conceded and running with it. My contribution was not the original meme, simply reshaping it to a more appropriate shape with a bit of tongue in the cheek.

Neither license actually gives the author freedom. The license is not for the author. A license amounts to a covenant not to sue from the author - who needs mental, not legal, help if he tries to sue himself.

The BSD license gives your immediate downstream maximum freedom, including the ability to cut off freedom, refuse to offer it, to their own downstream.

The GPL license gives immediate downstream nearly the same thing, minus only the ability to cut off the freedom of their downstream.

There's very little more to it.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Hatta]

We would have LOVED to support the standard and commit code back, but the restrictions on our own code were unsustainable

In other words, your project could not be viable without oppressing your users. Sounds like good riddance.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

And fundamentalism like this is why GPL 3 is so hated in the corporate world.

You effectively say "Our way or the highway." Well, the money is flowing along that highway. Hope you are willing to financially wither for your unrealistic and unsustainable ideals.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Hatta]

Well, the money is flowing along that highway. Hope you are willing to financially wither for your unrealistic and unsustainable ideals.

You could have said the same thing about slavery, child labor, anything OSHA regulates, etc. What's good for corporations is not the same as what's good for people.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD gives the author freedom, but screws the user. (1-1=0)

Except the BSD license doesn't screw the user, other users screw other users.

Blaming others for your shortcomings is immature.

Good people do not need laws to do the right thing, bad folks just find ways around them.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[exomondo]

BSD gives the author freedom, but screws the user. (1-1=0)

If I use a BSD-licensed program how does that "screw the user"?

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[exomondo]

BSD code works much the same way, you have more freedom with the initial version but there's nothing to stop future versions offering you no freedom whatsoever.

So just use the original version or fork that original version and continue development. The BSD license does not force you to contribute everything you do back (it is your choice what and how much you contribute back), and really that's the way it should be IMHO, it should be about people collaborating because they see a benefit in doing it, not because they are forced to do it. Permissive licenses allow those who may not share the same ideology in its entirety to collaborate to at least some degree whereas restrictive licenses force their ideology and an exclusion policy like that is not productive.

RMS himself said the reason he does not like LLVM is because "all contribution to LLVM directly helps proprietary software as much as it helps us", if you don't accept his ideology in its entirety he won't help you, that is just religious extremism. It allows free and proprietary vendors to work together and RMS is directly opposed to that collaboration.

...also don't resort to argumentum ad absurdum by comparing the freedom to distribute source code to the freedom to torture and murder people, that's just silliness.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[exomondo]

This attack vector, used by aggressive vendors who want to kill open competition, is what the GPL was intended to prevent.

Which "aggressive vendors" have done this? Even the most locked-down ones like Apple have contributed back and made their sources available, not only to the free software community but even to their direct competitors. Look at Webkit, Darwin, Clang/LLVM, CUPS, OpenSSL, etc...

But even then RMS is opposed to the very existence of LLVM just because it is a project that competes with GCC but does not share his ideology and he does not want to allow collaboration between free software and proprietary software developers which he makes quite clear and that sort of zealotry should be discouraged:
"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."
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00247.html

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[davidhoude]

comparing BSD license to child slavery seems like a fair comparison

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Hatta]

Compare it to any violation of rights you wish. The GP's assertion that corporate profits trump rights is pants on head crazy.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[exomondo]

Ok but where is this actually happening? People have been raving on about this for decades in the restrictive vs permissive license debate. Restrictive cuts off collaboration with proprietary vendors and permissive relies on proprietary vendors contributing back voluntarily. There's always the anti-permissive doom-and-gloom scenarios but when have they ever actually played out like that? And even if they did you could just fork the permissive codebase to a restrictive one which would cut off the proprietary vendors and just continue on as before without that collaboration.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[mark-t]

No...all the GPL says is that the copyright holder isn't surrendering any of his or her rights to control who is allowed to make derivative works by stipulating requirements that must be fulfilled by anyone who wants to make a derivative work. Considering that you need the original copyright holder's permission to make a derivative work anyways, it hasn't taken away any freedoms that would ordinarily have existed otherwise.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare it to any violation of rights you wish. The GP's assertion that corporate profits trump rights is pants on head crazy.

He clearly said: And fundamentalism like this is why GPL 3 is so hated in the corporate world. Can't you read? If you don't want that aspect of the corporate world participating in your development then fine, bugger off, thankfully Linus doesnt agree with that sort of stupid religious developer segregation so Linux wont go GPLv3. The funny thing is ultimately you leech a hell of a lot off those corporations anyway, the hardware you use and all those contributions to Linux, X11, et. al ultimately come from those corporations. Even in this post-PC era the idea of a PC that is totally free is still pretty much fantasy, you can scream "violation of rights" and play the idiot comparing it to child slavery all you want but in the end you need those corporations because you *still* cant manage on your own.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[mark-t]

1) the copyright holder has that right by default. not exercising it means they still have that right... they have to rather explicitly give it up to not have it.

2) As long as copyright lasts on each derivative work. Bear in mind that for absolutely *ANY* copyrighted work, you need the copyright holder's permission to make a derivative work anyways... the terms of the GPL merely state that anyone who will agree, as determined by whatever actions that they decide take, to the terms of that license will automatically be granted such permission.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have said the same thing about slavery, child labor

Don't be a fuckwit.

What's good for corporations is not the same as what's good for people.

But they often overlap. If restricting the user in some way that they dont care about has an even indirect effect of improving the product in an area that the user does care about then it is a benefit to them. By using the product they have not "lost" anything, no freedom that they had has been "taken away", those are the sorts of stupid arguments the RIAA/MPAA and anti-piracy orgs make about theoretically "lost profits".

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk as if "freedom" is some well-defined and constant thing, but it isnt. Though defining what it could be (especially the lower bound) would probably trivialize your argument as would providing examples of where this has actually happened and what impact it has had and then compare/contrast with the projects that have flourished under that model.

The theory that a BSD-licensed project could potentially have a derived project that is closed off and oppressive (yet somehow also wildly successful proving that the "oppression" is of no consequence anyway) and manages to kill off its free predecessor is no more than FUD, in reality it doesnt actually happen. The reality is that we have a lot of great projects that have leveraged both free software and proprietary software developers to create software that is available free and in non-free devices/products.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious. In order to increase freedom the GPL restricts freedom; with BSD it's the other way round!

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Bert64]

Continuing development of the original won't be terribly useful when the majority of users have moved on to the new incompatible proprietary version...

By continuing development you will have to reinvent the wheel to duplicate any changes in the proprietary version, reverse engineer to work out any incompatibilities and if you continue releasing your code under the same terms the proprietary version can always take your changes for free while you have to expend significant efforts to replicate theirs.

Plus a proprietary version is likely to have a much bigger marketing budget, and thus the lions share of end users, and with proprietary changes making it ever harder to use the original open version.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[exomondo]

Continuing development of the original won't be terribly useful when the majority of users have moved on to the new incompatible proprietary version...

Why not? Aren't you developing it because you want to use it?

By continuing development you will have to reinvent the wheel to duplicate any changes in the proprietary version

If the proprietary version didn't exist you would still have to do that work to develop those features anyway.

Plus a proprietary version is likely to have a much bigger marketing budget, and thus the lions share of end users, and with proprietary changes making it ever harder to use the original open version.

Why does it matter whether that version has more users? I don't use a program because of the amount of other people that use it, I use it because it serves my needs.

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[Bert64]

If only we could always use what served our needs, and never had to interoperate with others...

Re:The GPL is like the Slashdot Beta: Unwanted!

[exomondo]

How exactly does this preclude interoperability? Even in cases like office suites where you have proprietary products that aren't forks of a free programs (MS Office and iWork), a SaaS model in Google Docs and free options like Libre and Open Office there are people interoperating. In some cases you can end up with formatting problems but this is an extreme case where the products in question aren't even derived from the same code base at all yet allow for interoperability.

And even if the proprietary version was an incompatible fork why would people to move to a system that didn't allow them to interoperate if interoperability was important?

Not a perfect world

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]... in a perfect world ... [/quote]
And that's exatly why we need GPL ;)

Filters

[Anonymous Coward]

In Classic, yes, you could filter comments. It was by score, but it was great.
Not in Beta, my friend ;)

Re:Filters

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible in Beta too, and -- lo and behold -- that feature works pretty well actually. Use the gear icon at top of the comments.

Re:Filters

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, extreme irony ftw! :D
--
[FUCK BETA]

Re:Filters

[Anonymous Coward]

Then just switch back to Classic, my friend.

Re:Filters

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you can, my friend.

I've gotta say... BETA sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

At first I wasn't sure, but looking back at the classic, much easier to navigate, browse, skim comments. In a way there's an inherent conflict between real content and the visual "spaciousness" aesthetic of the new UI. Why have so much space wasted and so much content deliberately hidden. This is killing my favorite website. Listen to the users and turn off BETA. TURN OFF BETA! TURN OFF BETA!!!

OH MY GOD - MY EYES!!! FUCK BETA FUCK BETA F

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been hitting the Classic page until this evening.

Damn near went blind !

MY EYES!!! FUCK BETA FUCK BETA FUCK BETA

Slashdot: Betas for bros, stuff that monetizes

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is the new Myspace!

BETA & WINDOWS 8 Developers To Begin Collabora

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
  http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

-----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415

Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441

Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))

Remove GNU egotism and it _might_ work.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will work If and Only If: GNU-only developers bury their colossal ass-hat egos. Yes, FUCK YOU Ingo, and Fuck Off, Beta.

Re:Remove GNU egotism and it _might_ work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, GNU removal is NOT covered by obamacare.

What the heck?!

[Moridineas]

Upon loading the article page I was confronted with some spam video that started playing and blasting audio unrequested. Is this the next shoe to drop? First beta, next auto playing video ads? I've never disabled ads on slashdot and I disable my adblocker BECAUSE the ads haven't been annoying.

What is going on at slashdot?!?!

Re:What the heck?!

[unitron]

Upon loading the article page I was confronted with some spam video that started playing and blasting audio unrequested. Is this the next shoe to drop? First beta, next auto playing video ads? I've never disabled ads on slashdot and I disable my adblocker BECAUSE the ads haven't been annoying.

What is going on at slashdot?!?!

We are the Dice.

You will be SlashingtonPost'ed.

Resistance is futile.

Prepare to welcome your new Kardashian overlords.

I am deeply betafied

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought RMS was going to post here about how awful the Slashdot beta is and instead I read non-beta related comments?! The world is ending.

Build compatibility

[TheloniousToady]

Having read TFA, this collaboration appears to be partly about build compatibility. So far, it sounds like LLVM/Clang has been imitating GCC options. But what happens when one or the other of them adds a new option or feature? That might break builds designed for the other one. So, it sounds like the two groups would like to start communicating and coordinating so that both systems can be compatible at a build level in the future. Implicit in this is that both would continue to exist as independent entities and that build compatibility would be a primary goal for both. Perhaps some deeper form of technical collaboration might even be possible in the future.

Then again, I may have that all wrong. I know nothing about it except what I learned from reading TFA. If that causes a problem, I'll try not to do it again.

Re:Build compatibility

[maccodemonkey]

Having read TFA, this collaboration appears to be partly about build compatibility. So far, it sounds like LLVM/Clang has been imitating GCC options.

Apple used to have something called LLVM-GCC. I think it's still there so things like make, or other things that assume GCC still work, but at least in their Xcode tools they no longer support LLVM-GCC.

Re:Build compatibility

[Megol]

It's dead.

Re:Build compatibility

[rengolin]

This is exactly what I intended to do. I don't want to create extra work for compiler engineers of other toolchains, as well as extra work for compiler users, to ifdef their code to a level beyond recognition. We already have too many GCC extensions, and creating Clang extensions at this point wouldn't help anyone. If toolchain providers (I'm mostly interested in free/open ones) could agree on some basic levels, users would know what to expect from their compilers without the need for magic headers.

Bizarre Personal Cult

[gnasher719]

Reading through the comments on the Phoronix website, there seem to be people who really think that Richard Stallman is Jesus. Do they think because Jesus washed his disciples' feet, he didn't wash his own?

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

much harder to reach, duh..

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[xororand]

RMS has been one of the most important men of the last 50 years or so.
His contribution to society is immense.
We need more like him to fight for our freedom.

Just imagine a world with only proprietary software.
Locked into golden prisons.
No thanks.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading through the comments on the Phoronix website, there seem to be people who really think that Richard Stallman is Jesus.

And if you read through the comments on any Slashdot article about RMS or the GPL, you'll find plenty of people who think he's the Anti-Christ, so it all balances out.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS has been one of the most important men of the last 50 years or so.

To your chagrin, he'll probably be written up in the history books alongside folks like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, if at all. Then again, since any brief history of the automobile seems to unfairly mention only Henry Ford, Bill Gates will probably be the figure that folks eventually read about in the one-page version.

His contribution to society is immense.

Nearly as immense as his girth.

We need more like him to fight for our freedom.

It fascinates me that anybody thinks the ability to modify software has anything at all to do with "freedom". Even more fascinating is that any significant number of people do.

Just imagine a world with only proprietary software.
Locked into golden prisons.
No thanks.

If software "freedom" is so important, why would you assume that RMS is the one-and-only person who could ever have delivered it to you? Don't you think someone else could have come up with something so significant (to you, at least)? Likewise, we would never have physics without Newton, and we would never have light bulbs without Thomas Edison. Especially florescent and LED light bulbs.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I just realized that I put RMS in the same category as Newton and Edison. My bad.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Pseudonym]

It takes an extremist to shift the Overton window.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

True enough, but there seems to be little controversy over his personal hygiene. Or lack thereof.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[cheesybagel]

Yes. I used to read that Edison 'invented' the light bulb and similar crapola when I was a kid. In fact this view was expounded in US TV kid shows. Heck if you listened to what was said it was like he had invented every single application of electricity developed in the XIXth century. Then I learned better. Then again they also used to say in the same TV shows that Columbus 'proved' the Earth was round and that people back then used to universally think the Earth was flat. Both of which is BS. Eratosthenes is turning in his grave now.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[maxwell demon]

Now I understand the fear about the GPL being contagious. People just fear that he didn't wash his hands before writing it, and therefore it is full of pathogens! ;-)

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[TheloniousToady]

I've read many Edison biographies over the years, and it's true that the things he gets full credit for had some roots in work others were doing. I know of two exceptions: the phonograph and the carbon microphone (for telephones). Both were completely original and were important innovations.

In the case of RMS, it's striking that the also has done very little original work. In fact, the whole basis of the GNU was to replicate UNIX. Now that's something to be proud of - especially when the hardest part of imitating UNIX, the kernel, was done by a kid from Finland. The only truly original major thing RMS has ever done that I'm aware of is create the GPL. That may explain why he now devotes all his energy to that single idea. Either that, or he truly believes in it. The most successful hucksters always believe in their own snake oil.

Although the GPL is original, I agree with the AC above that "free software" either isn't all that significant, or if it is, would have been invented by somebody else. ("Necessity is the mother of invention.) And even though the phonograph was original to Edison, it's hard to imagine that we would not have sound recording today if he had never been born.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[rubycodez]

so you had bad teachers. serious history books correctly assert Edison developed the first *commercially viable incandescent light*

Edison himself did invent some very useful things, directed others to refine other things, made yet other inventions a commercial success. maybe you should read about him

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS has been one of the most important men of the last 50 years or so.

lol wow. I hope you mean in Computer Science, because if you mean in all disciplines, political, etc, you are bloody nuts mate.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[cheesybagel]

Yes. Because Joseph Swan didn't sell his bulbs to anyone. Not.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

just wondering which compiler does rhe NSA use?

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling RMS an "important man" is just a good way to communicate succintly to the average Joe that he's a big jerk.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

First fucking world.

Re:Bizarre Personal Cult

[Anonymous Coward]

The only truly original major thing RMS has ever done that I'm aware of is create the GPL.

As far as I know, RMS didn't create much of the GPL personally. He had legal assistance, because he was smart enough to know that he wasn't going to be able to personally write legalese that would stand up in court.

Don't get me wrong, the GPL is in a very real sense RMS's creation -- it is designed to accomplish his ideological goals, has his fingerprints all over it -- but much like the Edison lightbulb it was not a purely personal creation.

A mere dollar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax that noise, STAT!

"If I were RMS I'd be worried"

[smittyoneeach]

RMS is like a typecast actor. He has his role, and plays it unswervingly.
However, if there are ways to help out the studio, even if he's not in the film, what's the issue?

Link to past Slashdot story

[maxwell demon]

Why does the link to the last Slashdot story link to beta.slashdot.org?

Here's a better link:

http://fuckbeta.slashdot.org/s...

Re:Link to past Slashdot story

[maxwell demon]

Whoever modded this troll probably didn't try to follow the link. It works.

Re:Link to past Slashdot story

[maxwell demon]

It's the equivalent to a text-on-one-page link for multipage stories. I've never seen any of those modded down.

the Virtal Nature of closed-source code

[Anonymous Coward]

To play devil's advocate here: If a company restricts my freedom to use software how I see fit, I can choose not to use that company's product. If an individual restricts my freedom to use software how I see fit (for example, by saying that I can't sell a derivative work without also maintaining a method by which the source code of the derivative can be distributed), I can choose not to use that individual's code.

Just as one might discourage NVidia from distributing nonsensically-closed-source drivers, one might discourage RMS from distributing nonsensically-limited-in-intent source code.

And to take off my Devil's Advocate hat and stick on some actual horns:
Remember that the GPL doesn't just say you need to distribute the source code of derivative works. It also has the ramification that everyone else you collaborate with needs to be using GPL-compatible code. This is fine for individuals, but for absolutely any business, this is a nightmare to manage. Using a third-party library? You need to be sure it's GPL compliant, or you will be tainted. Using outsourced developers? Are you sure they understand the GPL and everything it implies? You aren't, so you can't actually trust them to touch anything you may have wanted to release under GPL.

What it comes down to is this: GPL isn't Viral, but non-GPL code is. It will get into your codebase, and spread around, and unlike GPL, there is no simple remedy of releasing the source-code or removing functionality.

The result is that it's far easier, and far less-risky, to either: 1) Avoid GPL code, or 2) [what actually happens] keep a very broad definition of what doesn't count as "distribution". Make sure everyone other than the community which could actually benefit (and therefore which might complain that certain parts are not distributed) will get a copy. Use GPL code "internally", but never give back your changes, at all, even a little. Because that would just open you up to liability.

More importantly, Beta dead yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still waiting for the official announcement that Beta is dead. With a proper head-shot to avoid any zombification.

/. needs to get over Classic

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot Classic is not for everyone or every company, get over it.

The Beta is the only real future of Slashdot. In a perfect world we wouldn't need versions at all and everyone wouldn't have a hissyfit every time someone changed the style of a site.

Re:/. needs to get over Classic

[Anonymous Coward]

Why oh why are the shills always AC? They are giving AC a bad image.

You are not reading history.

[tlambert]

I'm not sure how GCC could benefit from this.

You are not reading history.

GCC moves too damn slow and doesn't include features that developers (and more importantly: the companies which pay developers) want. These days, that includes the changes between the GPLv2 and GPLv3 not being wanted by the people who pay the bills.

GCC was more or less started in 1984: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnup...

GCC was almost replaced by the EGCS fork in 1997, and it took two years before RMS finally gave up on the idea of having the ultimate editorial control over the language implementation, and "blessed" EGCS as the replacement for GCC. When he did that, he gave up on limiting the OSs that the compiler worked on, and limiting the inclusion of things like #pragma (which used to exec "nethack" because RMS didn't like it), and some of the language front ends that are now included, like g77, which RMS didn't want.

GCC is on the verge of being marginalized again by LLVM; all the sexy compiler work is happening in LLVM, all the bright young minds in the compiler world are going to LLVM because it's a lot easier to make a front end for a new language or a back end for a different processor or embedded controller or virtual machine. LLVM is the "go-to" compiler for academic projects involving compiler research.

It makes sense; GCC: 1984; +15 years = EGCS: 1999; +15 years = ????: 2014.

RMS' recent appeal *might* be able to attract a bunch of new ideologues to the GCC project, and have them forsake LLVM work, but more likely course and project requirements for a degree, and after that, an employer, probably mean that LLVM is going to remain the "go-to" compiler for the new blood.

The idea that GCC can leverage some of the new blood by making it easier for them to work with code in both contexts, rather than leaving GCC in the ashbin of history, is about the *only* way to give GCC the transfusion of new blood it's going to need to survive another 15 years.

It also couldn't hurt to expand the number of (or replace) members of the "GCC steering committee" so that GCC can get a little more forward momentum. You can get forward momentum one of two ways: (1) more specific impulse, or (2) take off the parking brake.

Re:You are not reading history.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

LLVM is the "go-to" compiler for academic projects involving compiler research.

Actually I believe the goto languages are Scheme and Haskell.

Re:You are not reading history.

[EvanED]

So first, from my informal observations I think you'd find O'Caml much more commonly used than either of those for academic projects in compiler research.

Second, don't look at it from the point of view of what the researchers are writing their programs in, but rather look at what languages they're analyzing and what they're using to do it. And even though the researchers are writing in O'Caml or whatever, the programs they're interested in looking at are usually C, C++, or Java, because those are what is used out there in the real world. Java has a different suite of tools (SOOT is popular), but if you're looking at someone doing work work either on compiler optimizations for or on some kind of analysis of C or C++ code, chances are quite good they'll be using LLVM to generate their IR.

Re:You are not reading history.

[Anonymous Coward]

These days, that includes the changes between the GPLv2 and GPLv3 not being wanted by the people who pay the bills.

The wonderful thing about the GPL is the code doesn't just disappear when a company goes under, or decides it doesn't want to make a program anymore, or decides that some other program is more profitable, or decides to buy a competitor and halt both products and focus on their cash cow instead.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Also, I pay bills, I don't really care either way about GPL 2 or 3 or any other license, there are much bigger issues.

Claiming to speak for everyone who "pays the bills" is ridiculous. All you are really saying is "this is the side money is on, all hail our money overlord" .

If that is all you stand for that is fine, but there are people in this world who have other goals, other interests, and other desires, and it is not something everyone has to bow down before because you say so.

Re:You are not reading history.

[AmiMoJo]

On the other hand as a commercial programmer I like the fact that GCC is mature and very stable. I write for microcontrollers mostly, and don't really want major changes coming on a regular basis.

Also it seems that GCC usually produces faster executables, at least the last time I checked, so even if you do care more about performance it would seem to be the (free) compiler of choice.

Re:You are not reading history.

[Anonymous Coward]

GHC Haskell's LLVM back end is seeing a lot of interest at the moment.

Re:You are not reading history.

[sjames]

While C technically supports it, I'm pretty sure the number 1 GOTO language is BASIC :-)

Re:You are not reading history.

[Half-pint HAL]

Actually I believe the goto languages are Scheme and Haskell.

Nah, the GOTO language is Basic....

Re:You are not reading history.

[Half-pint HAL]

The wonderful thing about the GPL is the code doesn't just disappear when a company goes under, or decides it doesn't want to make a program anymore, or decides that some other program is more profitable, or decides to buy a competitor and halt both products and focus on their cash cow instead.

Neither does code written on a BSD-style license...

LLVM & GCC Compiler Devs Do NotTo Begin Collab

[Anonymous Coward]

Phoronix is a troll infested shithole pushing click bait. Do not click that link.

Real story: Some guy says "Wouldn't it be nice if ...". Discussion ensues. Mostly "no".

I hope that many others projects will do the same

[jcdr]

Good move.

While forking is a necessary fact to develop a new idea (even into the original community), merging (at lead idea) is even more necessary long term consequence to avoid fragmentation. The most dangerous thing for open source communities is to start to see others projects and communities as futile and without interesting for learning something.

Desktop related projects should really start to go into that direction now.

This is a good thing.

[pouar]

While I do agree with Stallman over them using a BSD-3 like license. I do like LLVM and Clang. And working together will benefit both LLVM/Clang and GCC which is a good thing.

Re: This is a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would make sense, if the new LLVM beta wasn't so awful. I don't usually agree with Stallman but he might be right this time... programmers should be allowed to keep their classic GCC.

And a new cuisine TOE JELLY

[Anonymous Coward]

Toe Jelly. Hmmmm!

Re: BETA & WINDOWS 8 Developers To Begin Colla

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. However I am concerned that you will sell your newsletter to Dice who will then write its value down to zero.

Sell Support

[Anonymous Coward]

So make sure to be overly complex and opaque so your software needs support.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a compiler grad student
 
Big fucking deal.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's watch the monkey dance
Anti-intellectualism
Make fun of the south of France
Anti-intellectualism

Anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-intellectualism!

Slashdot Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

For queers, by queers (and by "queers" I don't mean homosexuals. I mean weirdo, hipster doofuses).

RMS is a jew

[Anonymous Coward]

Twisted Talmud/Jewish quotes
1) If a Jew is tempted to do evil he should go to a city where he
is not known and do the evil there. â"Moed Kattan 17a
2) If a heathen (Gentile) hits a Jew, the Gentile must be killed.
Hitting a Jew is the same as hitting God. â"Sanhedrin 58b
3) A Jew need not pay a Gentile (âoeCutheanâ) the wages owed
him for work. â"Sanhedrin 57a
4) If a Jew finds an object lost by a Gentile (âoeheathenâ) it does
not have to be returned.
-Baba Mezia 24a also in Baba Kamma 113b
5) When a Jew murders a Gentile (âoeCutheanâ), there will be no
death penalty. What a Jew steals from a Gentile he may
keep. â"Sanhedrin 57a
6) Gentiles are outside the protection of the law and God
has âoeexposed their money to Israelâ. â"Baba Kamma 37b
7) All Gentile children are animals. â"Yebamoth 98a
8) Gentile girls are in a state of niddah (filth) from birth.
â"Abodah Zarah 36b
9) Only Jews are human (âoeOnly ye are designated menâ).
â"Baba Kattan 114a-114b
10) Jews may use lies (âoesubterfugesâ) to circumvent a Gentile.
â"Baba Kamma 113a
11) Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, "We have to recognize that Jewish
blood and the blood of a goy are not the same thing."
-NY Times, June 6, 1989
12) Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, "One million Arabs are not worth a
Jewish fingernail." -NY Daily News, Feb 28, 1994

Cooperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear-hear! For far too long RMS has let his ideology get in the way of true progress and cooperation, not to mention his ego...witness the fight over calling it "GNU/Linux" because he wanted recognition and attention.

RMS stole, didn't do anything new, just a GNU/jew

[Anonymous Coward]

Twisted Talmud/Jewish quotes

1) If a Jew is tempted to do evil he should go to a city where he
is not known and do the evil there. â"Moed Kattan 17a

2) If a heathen (Gentile) hits a Jew, the Gentile must be killed.
Hitting a Jew is the same as hitting God. â"Sanhedrin 58b

3) A Jew need not pay a Gentile (âoeCutheanâ) the wages owed
him for work. â"Sanhedrin 57a

4) If a Jew finds an object lost by a Gentile (âoeheathenâ) it does
not have to be returned.
-Baba Mezia 24a also in Baba Kamma 113b

5) When a Jew murders a Gentile (âoeCutheanâ), there will be no
death penalty. What a Jew steals from a Gentile he may
keep. â"Sanhedrin 57a

6) Gentiles are outside the protection of the law and God
has âoeexposed their money to Israelâ. â"Baba Kamma 37b

7) All Gentile children are animals. â"Yebamoth 98a

8) Gentile girls are in a state of niddah (filth) from birth.
â"Abodah Zarah 36b

9) Only Jews are human (âoeOnly ye are designated menâ).
â"Baba Kattan 114a-114b

10) Jews may use lies (âoesubterfugesâ) to circumvent a Gentile.
â"Baba Kamma 113a

11) Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, "We have to recognize that Jewish
blood and the blood of a goy are not the same thing."
-NY Times, June 6, 1989

12) Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, "One million Arabs are not worth a
Jewish fingernail." -NY Daily News, Feb 28, 1994

Re:RMS stole, didn't do anything new, just a GNU/j

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, Stallman is another bitch ass jew trying to undermine goy owned software businesses. Google pulls the same shit.

It's time for RMS to retire.

[markhahn]

He played an important part in the history of open source, but the movement is well-enough established that ideological purity is no longer necessary.

Re:It's time for RMS to retire.

[Anonymous Coward]

He played an important part in the history of open source, but the movement is well-enough established that ideological purity is no longer necessary.

Tell that to the OpenDarwin "community". They let themselves be Apple's laughing stock for years before finally closing down.

Re:It's time for RMS to retire.

[epyT-R]

On the contrary, some purity is always needed to refresh natural atrophy.

Re:It's time for RMS to retire.

[BasilBrush]

Godwin trap.

you stumbled on truth, have the balls to see it?

[raymorris]

You stumbled upon some truth. You did some thinking and came to a new realization. The only question remaining is, do you have the ability to learn from this, or will you choose to remain ignorant in order to protect the insane idea that you already knew everything before?

Re:you stumbled on truth, have the balls to see it

[Anonymous Coward]

I choose to remain ignorant, but only so I may bask in the glory of your reflected brilliance. For that great pleasure, I'll even endure thy deep condescension, which is the least I deserve at thy footsteps. After all, it is for my own good. Show me the way, though I am deeply unworthy. Though I endeavor to travel the path enlightenment, I know that I shall forever remain ignorant unlike thee, O Great Buddha.

You are lame.

[Sri Ramkrishna]

anonymous cowards are boring.

Thank God not everyone think like RMS

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God not everyone think like RMS... Better open source compilers that can work together better too is nothing if not beneficial to all open source software in future.

that's funny

[raymorris]

I like the way you said that. That was funny.

Re:that's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. I doubt it increased my Karma, though.

Beta is good

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Slashdot, I love the beta ! Good work !

Just FYI, angry old slashdotters, the old site was not compatible with browsers found on modern OS such as Android and iOS, in particular the slider used to filter comments. Thank you again. No need to spend time developing comments, everything is just there, ready to be read.

Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea, pseudo-Dr. Stallman notwithstanding.

Blimey, what a clever idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, red GNU agitators will put down their 500+ clause license and BSD free-love hippies will put down their "not invented here" mindset and both fight like civilized men about relevant stuff like endianness?

Tolerant Vs Intolerant Religions!

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL is the muslim extremist, the intolerant one whom you cannot marry unless you abandon your own beliefs and give over completely to that religion. BSD/Apache is the tolerant religion (and many, perhaps even most, muslims themselves fall into this category) that allows interfaith marriage where both parties can accept eachother's differences in belief system.

ANSWER THIS QUESTION

[Anonymous Coward]

" If I down-modded comment has "hosts file" in the subject line, I know why it's down-modded and hidden - it's not something anyone wants to read, and I'm not going to read it." - by raymorris (2726007) on Thursday February 06, 2014 @07:24PM (#46180661)

FROM http://meta.slashdot.org/comme...

Question: WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THAT?

APK

P.S.=> Depending on how you answer, we'll go from there... apk

Real issue here is, do YOU have any balls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just answer the simple question below:

" If I down-modded comment has "hosts file" in the subject line, I know why it's down-modded and hidden - it's not something anyone wants to read, and I'm not going to read it." - by raymorris (2726007) on Thursday February 06, 2014 @07:24PM (#46180661)

FROM http://meta.slashdot.org/comme...

Question: WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THAT?

APK

P.S.=> Depending on how you answer, we'll go from there... apk

A few topics

[rengolin]

After reading carefully *all* replies in slashdot, phoronix and the list, I wanted to reply to a few topics that have shown recurrently, and are not fitting in the GCC list.

1. RMS should be worried

No, he shouldn't. This is not about mixing licenses, it's not about taking away freedoms and it's not about stealing GCC's shine. RMS's contribution to society cannot be overstated, and I don't mean to obfuscate the importance of GPL, GNU, etc. This simply has *nothing* to do with politics, or copyright, or patents.

2. Only LLVM will benefit, because GCC can already use LLVM's code

While the latter is true, it doesn't imply the former. Also, this is not about being better than GCC, it's about both toolchains being better to the users, which I'm am both. This is not about competition, but collaboration.

Some people say GCC is going to die soon, I disagree. Other people say GCC will rust a bit with all the new blood going to LLVM, that might be a bit more real, but still, highly exaggerated. In any case, GCC is not immune to the outside world. With LLVM being actively encouraged by the kernel community to be compatible, the "one true compiler" position is being slowly replaced by a "number of free/open toolchains available", and in that scenario, GCC will benefit from collaboration as much as LLVM.

I can't read the future, but if you ask me, collaboration is always better, no matter in which position you are.

3. Competition is good for both on innovation

This is true, but collaboration is *also* good. We're talking about free/open software, we can both collaborate where competition hurts our users, as well as compete for performance and new features. I'm not proposing on merging the two toolchains, that would be outright madness! Just that we agree on the size of our nuts and bolts.

4. Enforcing standards & discussions will curb innovation

Absolutely right! Every second we spend arguing is a second we don't spend coding. My idea is to have a sort of zero-cost model, where tools report *how* they do it and maybe even for what reasons, and other tools either agree on, or disagree. A discussion will only happen if there are disparate solutions AND both sides want to argue, which no one should be forced to.

This could wind up in two threads: either every one posts what they think is right and don't discuss anything, or discussion ensues, standards are proposed upstream (C++, ISO, POSIX, Dwarf, etc) and compilers implement a more sane interface and the users benefit. Either way we win, since at least we'll have some documentation. The third outcome is to no one submit anything, than, well, no one spent time anyway, so we haven't lost anything.

5. Other standards should be used instead

Indeed. But standards are slow, and for a reason, and compiler implement extensions that will become standards in the future. This is how it's always been and I don't see this moving away. If most/all free/open compilers implement a specific feature, it'll be more argument to the standard to adopt that feature.

Other bits like warnings, implementation of standard classes, data layout and things that really promote binary compatibility are toolchain specific, and if all agree, than we could *use* a mix of tools interchangeably. This is a win for all the users.

raymorris: the 'great gov't coder' (lol, not)

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you program the Obamacare site? Must be: Since all you had was downmods vs. honest questions here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... and then here even when I "telegraphed" what I was going to use vs. what YOU said about hosts files that I quoted from you (but that YOU can't validly back up) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... especially since I can literally show roughly 100 people here that use them, and 50++ upmods of posts of mine on hosts also.

APK

P.S.=> Long & Short of it raymorris? You're a blowhard that fits the old saying "Close Enough for GOVERNMENT WORK" (ala the Obamacare website, lol)....

... apk

raymorris: the 'great gov't coder' (lol, not)

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you program the Obamacare site? Must be: Since all you had was downmods vs. honest questions here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... and then here even when I "telegraphed" what I was going to use vs. what YOU said about hosts files that I quoted from you (but that YOU can't validly back up) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... especially since I can literally show roughly 100 people here that use them, and 50++ upmods of posts of mine on hosts also.

APK

P.S.=> Long & Short of it raymorris? You're a blowhard that fits the old saying "Close Enough for GOVERNMENT WORK" (ala the Obamacare website, lol)....

... apk