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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.