91–100 of 259 posts
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I dunno, I think bit shifting a string to write to a file is pretty unreadable, not to mention C already has rock-solid string formatting options. It's an miasma of operator abuse built into "hello world".
> C already has rock-solid string formatting options Don't troll.
Quick google search shows clang lagging gcc in all but one test[0] at least on Intel Broadwell. Again, what is the benefit other than permissiveness of the license?
[0] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=clang-gcc... This is almost a year old, though
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Designs have been, but have actual chips been?
If you have the design, and you have access to FPGAs, I'd say that's got you pretty close already. Edit: We were talking about CPUs, not complete systems. And yes, the performance would be poor, but RMS has already strongly established that in his book performance is a distant runner-up to free.
To him, maybe. Not all of us have the luxury of getting paid to be a techno-luddite, using antiquated workflows and having the spare time available to re/write drivers when necessary.
If I made the same performance/freedom trade-offs I'd be completely unable to do my job.
The sad thing is that "easy to link and embed" and "permissive license" really didn't have to go together like they did in LLVM. GCC could have provided a library that made it easy to do code generation or compiler development. That library could still have used the GPL, so that only Free Software could use it. Some of the work that has happened around LLVM wouldn't have happened around such a library, but some of it…
I feel like you're missing the point of the GNU GPL. The original idea behind the FSFs idea of open source was an ecosystem where every new development resulted in more open and free code. We're talking about people who truly believed in getting away from commercial software entirely. There were people who felt that one day, Linux desktops could replace Windows and even high end tools like Photoshop and Final Cut wou…
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RMS is nothing if not ideologically consistent. I applaud his goals and perseverance, even if they are not quite the same as mine.
I used to think the same as you, but I came around. I am annoyed by the FSF dogma because they lay an exclusive claim on the word ethics when applied to software. I consider myself an ethical person even in software. But my definition of ethical is less strict than the RMS definition.
I'm not sure that's a fair characterization. They've defined an ethical framework for software and then they discuss things being ethical or not within that framework.
Anyone is free to use a different ethical framework and decide if an action is ethical or not within that framework instead.
The sad thing is that "easy to link and embed" and "permissive license" really didn't have to go together like they did in LLVM. GCC could have provided a library that made it easy to do code generation or compiler development. That library could still have used the GPL, so that only Free Software could use it. Some of the work that has happened around LLVM wouldn't have happened around such a library, but some of it…
I doubt that rust would have happened under the gpl but i would love to hear what the rust team has to say about that.
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RMS saying that other developers have a different concept of software freedom is reasonable. RMS saying that the difference is important, and his idea of software freedom is reasonable and worth debating. Saying that other developers, "don't talk about freedom" because they use a different license is first class assholitry.
No it's just his same argument as ever. The GPL specifically addresses RMS' issues of software freedom. Choosing a different license ignores the topic of software freedom as defined by the FSF. That's all he is saying. Look the GPL is a hard choice. It is very unfriendly to a developer who is looking to make a living on their code, since it makes selling that code as an artifact. It's not impossible but much more com…
It seems like you accidentally a word somewhere in here, but know that you can charge ANY price you want for compiled software distributed under the terms of the GPL. Your only requirement is to -upon request from one to whom you have distributed your software- provide the source code for your software to that person.
Fulfilling the request with patches against other code is acceptable. Requiring a snail-mailed request is acceptable. Charging your actual direct costs for fulfilling the request is acceptable.
Selling GPL'd software isn't more complicated than selling non-GPL'd software.
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Compiler bugs are usually limited to a single compilation unit and are usually submitted by doing a binary search on a pre processed source file. This is certainly true for closed source as well - just redact the (few) symbol names and create something that will compile to an a.out that demonstrates the problem. God saves a puppy anytime someone filed a compiler bug with a trivial test case that demonstrates the prob…
> God saves a puppy anytime someone filed a compiler bug with a trivial test case that demonstrates the problem. The current (r10e) shipping version of clang cannot return 128bit floats from a function. #include int main(int c, char **v) { std::stringstream("1.5"); double x; s >> x; return x == 1.5 ? 0 : 1; } EDIT: You don't need "long double" in the above. double (or float) will show the problem. The standard librar…
I see mention of long double in your edit, but even then wasn't that 80bit on PC architecture. Only Solaris and HP-UX? defined that as 128bit.
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GCC has been designed specifically NOT to be extended. Richard Stallman reasoned that by exposing an interface to other applications, or allowing other applications to access or modify intermediate code/trees, closed source proprietary applications could be built around GCC. He was probably right ... but we all ended up with a worse compiler.
> worse compiler Last time I checked gcc binaries beat Clang performance wise.
The sad thing is that "easy to link and embed" and "permissive license" really didn't have to go together like they did in LLVM. GCC could have provided a library that made it easy to do code generation or compiler development. That library could still have used the GPL, so that only Free Software could use it. Some of the work that has happened around LLVM wouldn't have happened around such a library, but some of it…
I doubt that rust would have happened under the gpl but i would love to hear what the rust team has to say about that.
Fortunately, given that Graydon did prefer a permissive license for the compiler, LLVM provided exactly what he was looking for.