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RMS Objects To Support For LLVM's Debugger In GNU Emacs's Gud.el

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the purity-in-body-mind-and-spirit dept.

An anonymous reader writes with the news that Richard Stallman is upset over the prospect of GNU Emacs's Grand Unified Debugger (Gud.el) supporting LLVM's LLDB debugger. Stallman says it looks like there is a systematic effort to attack GNU packages and calls for the GNU Project to respond strategically. He wrote his concerns to the mailing list after a patch emerged that would optionally support LLDB alongside GDB as an alternative debugger for Emacs. Other Emacs developers discounted RMS' claims by saying Emacs supports Windows and OS X, so why not support a BSD-licensed compiler/debugger? The Emacs maintainer has called the statements irrelevant and won't affect their decision to merge the LLDB support.

2 of 551 comments (clear)

  1. Bit of a hatchet job by cfalcon · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a little more than is being reported. Here's some other RMS lines in the same thread:

    First we have:

    "More precisely, Apple intends LLVM and Clang to make GCC cease to be a
    signal success and a reason for all sorts of companies to work on a
    compiler that always gives users freedom. That would be a victory for
    Apple and a defeat for freedom.

    I don't know what LLDB is, or what it might do. I am going to find
    out."

    That's a little bit paranoid, but it is still a cautious statement.

    Then:

    "This question is a small part of a big issue which is more or less bad.
    I want to find out what it is, and think about it. Please do not ask
    me to rush to a conclusion without finding out what is happening."

    Again, in all of his posts he mentions wanting to discuss it a bit more. RMS is pretty incendiary, eccentric, and often does or says crazy shit but... in this case it sounds like he said something alarmist to get attention and try to get some discussion, without stamping his foot down or flipping his shit. That he's being selectively quoted to make news is bad juju.

  2. Re:BSD is more threatening than proprietary by Dagger2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, it is, but it does sod all to protect that openness, so BSDed software often ends up less open by the time you actually get a copy of it.

    The only stuff the GPL doesn't let you do is remove other people's freedom. That should never be a problem unless you were planning to do that in the first place.