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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.
You've made a good point, and I want to emphasize that the LLVM License *IS* an open source license, it's just not as restrictive as the GPLv3 license in terms of how the software can be used. RMS wants software to be free, but GPLv2 is more free than GPLv3 because GPLv2 has fewer restrictions on how the software can be used. RMS is marginalizing himself with his crusade against commercial software.
Excellent point, open and free but only in the way he sees freedom... We are talking about the man who is insisting to call Linux, GNU/Linux and likes to flame people for speaking up their minds, with different world visions...
So he tries to persuade people to agree with him, perhaps passionately, perhaps vehemently, maybe even not so nicely ... but (to my knowledge) he has never used force or fraud to coerce people into behaving the way he thinks they should. That sounds perfectly freedom-loving to me. I'm really not seeing the problem here.
If your opinion of the guy is correct, then his methods will cause fewer people to listen to him and he will thereby undermine his own efforts. This means such a situation would be self-correcting. I've never heard of RMS using force or threat of force to make you call it "GNU/Linux". The degree of power he has over you is determined entirely by how much you decide to listen to him*. The ability to recognize this is generally called perspective.
It's as though some people have an entitlement mentality, a manner in which they are self-centered. It leads to them feeling like they've been wronged or mistreated somehow when they discover that someone doesn't agree with them, won't support or otherwise validate them (probably the part that really bothers you), and speaks against them.
* I started to add "and use his software", but then I realized that's not true - you could use Emacs with the LLVM debugger ... or not, whether anyone else likes it or not, because the GPL and LLDB's NCSA license are compatible. RMS deliberately chose a license allowing this to happen. Did you fail to recognize the significance of that? That freedom means people might do things with which he disagrees does not remove his right to disagree. Are you suggesting it should? If not, what exactly are you trying to say, if you are not in fact expressing another entitlement mentality?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
RMS isn't against commercial (for profit) software at all. He's against software that is not completely transparent to the user about what it's doing (and that you can't fix yourself if it breaks).
The software that he is objecting to supporting is completely transparent.
You can also fix it if it breaks.
Here is the god damned svn: http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-proje...
So why is he complaining here? What we can take from this is that your comments are worthless shit.
Your complaint is shit, because the point is both well known, and obvious to anybody who bothered to understand the background.
The point of the Free Software movement embodied in the Free Software Foundation is to create and support software that actively protects the users freedom by ensuring not only that the original software was transparent and user-modifiable, but also that it would protect you from being embraced, extended, and extinguished. Not everybody agrees with this position, but it is a well known and easy to understand position.
The counter argument isn't just, "hurr, whu? huh? you're shit." The counter argument is actually that if users have enough freedom available, that they can simply switch to something else and that "embrace, extend, extinguish" has been countered mostly by user demand for portable data formats, and SCOTUS decisions protecting the right to inter-operate.
The counter-counter argument is that users who really want Software Freedom can choose GPL software and not have to remain vigilant about each little example, each case where somebody is trying to include some proprietary bit and then get you to "need" it. They can instead simply remain vigilant about one thing; using Free Software. And then they're protected, and they can make business decisions with a higher level of predictability.
Most people can read these arguments and easily choose which one they prefer. The subjective choice, as with most subjective choices, are easy. But not everybody arrives at the same choices! And it is clearly in error to claim that one side didn't have a good point, or is "shit." They're just different points, based on different values and concerns.
I just wish there was a version of the debate where becoming a package maintainer and thrusting a new paradigm on the users was recognized as a removal of freedom, a form of "embrace, extend, extinguish."