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RMS Objects To Support For LLVM's Debugger In GNU Emacs's Gud.el
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.
... especially when someone acts freely and in a way you object to.
It is more resentment as BSD is "actually" open as opposed to the handcuffed license he wants to impose on people. Will take BSD style licensing any day of the week over proprietary or GPL
Some of us prefer others to voluntarily give back rather than be forced to.
Actually "users" don't touch source code, they might hire a programmer to do that, but then that's another developer.
GNU makes the right of "information" higher than that of people, ever.
Say what? I disagree, but at least your rant made sense, right up unti you said:
>So yes, people who need to work for a living will prefer a BSD license over a GNU one.
BSD is only a hairs-breadth removed from public domain - it gives away pretty much all the rights that can be given, unlike GPL which retains many rights in order to impose reciprical giving on downstream developers.
I can only assume that by "people who need to work for a living" you are refering not to the people that did the actual work to create the BSD code, but rather to the exploitative sorts who happily harvest their code to incorporate into proprietary software without giving anything back.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Lets see what my grandmother wants while we're at. Her opinion is just as valid.
If your grandmother is a developer producing useful software available at no cost, used by millions all around the world, and both articulates a philosophy and draws up a license facilitating useful systems such as every Linux distribution, starts a foundation known around the world to advocate said philosophy and host said software, and encouages many people (even those who do not agree) to think about and discuss such matters ... then yes at that point I will begin to care about her opinion on this subject.
If you don't like RMS that's fine, if you think he's completely wrong that's fine too, but to dismiss his views the way you are doing is weak, cheap, and shows that you lack the emotional maturity to separate your personal feelings from the actual subject at hand. I hope that pointing this out will be useful to someone else, because as for you, I doubt I could reason with you in an adult manner. The really annoying part is: so many people are like this that they think it's normal.
RMS' philosophy is that the code should be free so you can do whatever you want with it. Unless you do something he doesn't like, in which case, he throws a tantrum. This is about making free software compatible with more free software, but since he doesn't like the licence on the other free software, he wants this restricted.
If LLVM were a Microsoft product instead of an Apple product
LLVM is not an Apple product. It's an open source project which Apple, amongst others, incorporate into their products, and to which they contribute source improvements.
Right and Android LLVM is not an Google product. It's an open source project which Google, amongst others, incorporate into their products, and to which they contribute source improvements.
So he's basically afraid of competition from a better product, and instead of upping his game he's playing unfair with regard to access to "his" products?
Most people could see this coming. Open source is great for developers, freeware is great for end users and free software just happens to be compatible with both of those and thus provided a vehicle for them. Now it's being done in a way that is also compatible with proprietary software and therefore RMS doesn't like it. So, as you say, he needs to up his game and create a better product that just so happens to be free software because nobody cares about free software in and of itself.
He has the freedom to throw a tantrum. You, and everyone else, also have the freedom to distribute a version of Emacs with LLVM support.
That is what Copyleft is. That is what GPL is supposed to be: using the copyright laws that were designed to protect proprietary interests in away that instead protects Software Freedom, that enforces Software Freedom.
Just because you refuse to understand the terms and arguments doesn't mean you've uncovered some hidden truth or something. You don't like Software Freedom. You find enforced Freedom too restrictive. You want to choose to be free, or not to be free. That is fine.
People probably mod you down because you pretend that people with a different view must just be stupid, or something. These are different choices based on different values, there is no utility in complaining about other people's license choices.
You know best what license to use for software you write, I know best what license to use for software I write, and RMS knows best what license to use for software that the FSF writes. This is all as it should be.
If you can't link GPL code at work, that is because of choices your boss made, not because of choices that RMS made or some implied deficiency in the GPL. Remember, people who choose the GPL want to be protected from your boss. People who don't share the values of the GPL are excluded for real reasons. You don't have to agree with those reasons or share their values to recognize that they have reasons that are based on their values, and they have every right to license their software in the way that they do. And you should be aware most of them are getting paid to write their code, most GPL code is written by paid programmers. Paid by companies. For-profit companies. With bosses who choose GPL. For business reasons. That doesn't make them less Free.
You (paraphrased): Abolishing slavery infringes on my freedom to keep slaves
The GPL is designed to restrain you from restraining others, you get certain rights and you can't pass on any less. You're right it does make reciprocity ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") a legal requirement, not voluntary. You want others to be nice to you, but the freedom to be a dick to them. But those people generally don't stay on my Christmas gift list for long. But hey, if it works... I mean GPL projects are free to use BSD code as well, unless you're on a crusade against proprietary software having more code everyone can use is a good thing.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No, it's not throwing tantrum. RMS has a philosophy that users of software should have certain freedoms / rights (use, study & modify, redistribute, distribute). That's the gist of GPL and why he founded GNU. BSD-style license does not guarantee these freedoms, and Stallman sees wider adoption of projects using those licenses as a threat to free software. I do work on BSD-licensed projects, but I certainly do share his fear that this poses serious threat to free software in the long run.
I don't think it's a conspiracy or somehow widely orchestrated effort - more likely it's simply easier not to guarantee those rights and thus more attractive for commercial companies (participating in those projects), but I believe the threat to the freedoms is real.
RMS has a philosophy that users of software should have certain freedoms / rights (use, study & modify, redistribute, distribute). That's the gist of GPL and why he founded GNU. BSD-style license does not guarantee these freedoms more likely it's simply easier not to guarantee those rights ...
What rights do BSD contributors lose? All the community code exists, the community can continue without the commercial changes, the community is not required to use some commercial fork. They lose nothing if some contributor chooses not to give back. Furthermore, users of GPL'd code decide not to give back at times too. They can use some a commercial fork internally and benefit from community work and not give back. Also, various commercial users of BSD code have a pretty good track record of contributing back.
What rights do BSD users lose? **IF** they care about "free software" or access to the source code they can just avoid commercial/closed forks and stick to the community based code.
The GPL does *not* offer greater freedom, it creates restrictions to force behaviors it believes benevolent. Forced benevolence may or may not be a good thing but it is not freedom.
RMS did the very same thing to GNUstep. GNUstep currently supports both GCC and LLVM/Clang. The project does this for good reason: because Objective-C is better supported in clang than it is in gcc. GCC doesn't even consider ObjC as a release critical compiler and LLVM/Clang looks on it as central. Additionally clang supports many modern features of ObjC that gcc lacks and shows no signs of ever attaining.
RMS specifically indicated that supporting LLVM/Clang by mentioning it on our wiki page (http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/ObjC2_FAQ) was harming the GNU project in an important place. Our response was swift and unanimous against remove it since all we are doing is providing user choice and, given that GCC is inferior to LLVM/Clang for ObjC, we MUST support LLVM/Clang. To date we have gotten no response from RMS.
I think it's grossly unfair of RMS to request this. By supporting Clang and LLVM and LLDB we are not impacting user freedom. All we are doing is offering users a choice which, last time I checked was completely okay. What we have here is a problem where RMS sees his role in the FLOSS community diminishing because someone has come up with a faster, more useful and better support compiler.
If anyone has damaged the FSF it is not the folks at Clang/LLVM it is RMS and the FSF itself. They have systematically impacted developer freedom by doing the following to GCC:
https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005-01/msg00008.html
"One of our main goals for GCC is to prevent any parts of it from being
used together with non-free software. Thus, we have deliberately
avoided many things that might possibly have the effect of
facilitating such usage, even if that consequence wasn't a certainty.
We're looking for new methods now to try to prevent this, and the outcome
of this search would be very important in our decision of what to do." -- RMS
This is terrible! Why would you do this?! RMS is trying to achieve through technical means what proprietary software companies try to do via copyright and IP law.
RMS is risking an all out rebellion of pretty much all of the FSF/GNU projects if he keeps this up. My advice to the FSF and to RMS is to allow developer freedom and stop viewing LLVM/Clang as a threat or a setback for it is neither.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
GPLv3 started because RMS saw that companies were using the GPL in a manner that was compliant to the letter but not to the spirit. Back then, the GNU haters laughed at him, as usual, because "who would want to run code on a set-top box". Nowadays, the vast majority of the end-user devices are tivoized (Android, Apple, Microsoft, ...), and users can't do anything with the code that runs on them, including fixing security bugs and auditing it to find out what it does with all their personal data, let alone (God forbid!) run their own programs on it. So the introduction of the GPLv3 wasn't a whim as you are implying, it was actually sensible and farsighted.
Also, I should point out that the LLVM/clang situation is a bit more complex. If I recall, LLVM came about because the gnu toolchain deliberately obfuscates it's output and interoperability interfaces with other tools even within the toolchain. This strategy was chosen because the outputs of the individual software tool in the toolchain were not, and could not be protected by the GPL (any version). It would have been possible for a proprietary product to be developed that didn't link to gcc (or another part of the toolchain) to take the useful output of gcc (e.g. a parsed abstract syntax tree) and use it to any number of cool things. The product could still be distributed with gcc (and the required accompanying notices) but the rest of the code would be locked up, because it doesn't link to gcc, only depends on it at runtime. This violates the spirit of the GPL which is not only to make software free, but to keep it free.