31–40 of 338 posts
Context: This discussion originated on the emacs-devel mailing list, where there was a discussion of adding code to company-mode (text completion) explicitly supporting Clang [1]. It was pointed out [2] that RMS has in the past shown a disinclination to incorporate Clang support into GNU projects because of his perception of its encouragement of proprietary software riding the coattails of open source (but not Free)…
Clang is free software.
Stallman wants you to use Free software because it's free-as-in-ideology, not because it necessarily works well or does what you want.
He's basically saying: "We must avoid design decisions that allow users to do X, because we disagree with X". Everyone has their own definition of "Free", but to me that seems very similar to Walled Garden decisions regarding my freedom as an end user. You could just as easily say: "We don't want to allow unsigned code to run, because we disagree with not signing code" I guess the difference is that you can fork gcc…
GPL is restrictive and defending users' freedoms is the exact reason for this. If you care about that, welcome to the GPL side; if you don't want the imposed restrictions but also ready to stop enforcing (through restrictions) GPL-granted freedoms - BSD and company await you.
Stallman consistently ignores the free market when writing about software freedom. What users want, the free market will provide. If they want customizable software, the market will give it to them. If they only want feature X, the market will give it to them. If they want interop., they will get that too. If they don't care about modifying the source code, well, people won't offer it. The GPL is not what allows user…
The people who campaign for GPL software authors to change their license seem to assume that the authors of the software naively chose the GPL, as opposed to choosing it for its particular spirit. That's really important distinction that people don't realize about the GPL - it's designed to protect the rights of the END USERS. And that's great when the end user is you and me, but it's also not surprising that we, as…
end users do not give a shit about source code (or software licensing at all).
The people who campaign for GPL software authors to change their license seem to assume that the authors of the software naively chose the GPL, as opposed to choosing it for its particular spirit. That's really important distinction that people don't realize about the GPL - it's designed to protect the rights of the END USERS. And that's great when the end user is you and me, but it's also not surprising that we, as…
end users do not give a shit about source code (or software licensing at all).
Xs don't care about Y, except for those Xs that do.
Insightful stuff.
Stallman consistently ignores the free market when writing about software freedom. What users want, the free market will provide. If they want customizable software, the market will give it to them. If they only want feature X, the market will give it to them. If they want interop., they will get that too. If they don't care about modifying the source code, well, people won't offer it. The GPL is not what allows user…
All you did was repeat "free market" a bunch of times. Congratulations.
He's basically saying: "We must avoid design decisions that allow users to do X, because we disagree with X". Everyone has their own definition of "Free", but to me that seems very similar to Walled Garden decisions regarding my freedom as an end user. You could just as easily say: "We don't want to allow unsigned code to run, because we disagree with not signing code" I guess the difference is that you can fork gcc…
That's my plan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clang is free software.
[deleted]
It's not a copyleft license, or a GNU license, but its a free software license.
The 2 and 3 clause BSD licenses are GPL-compatible free software licenses. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ModifiedBSD
Even the original 4-clause BSD license is a free software license, although the 'advertising' clause is GPL-incompatible. It's also not used much any more. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD
Is it bad I just don't care that LLVM has enabled non-free software? Because it has done a h*ck of a lot for opensource software. New languages, new compilers, new optimisers, new IDEs have sprung up around an impressive framework. I also don't understand how LLVM enables non-free software any more than binutils does. I can do: binutils/cat my_file | my_incredibly_none_free_program | binutils/grep my_pattern which is…
You feel the need to censor "heck"? Seriously though, I agree. Stallman here seems to be adopting almost a religious argument, not a pragmatic one. He even announces a refusal to use Skype because it's not free software. If he prioritizes freedom over everything else, then more power to him, but to me talking about who "wins" and "loses" on some kind of arbitrary scale of freedom does not make a compelling case again…
Which is a valid complaint given the nature of Skype. There's also tons of other reasons, though. Primarily technical ones.
Either way, software freedom is an important goal and even though I don't necessarily agree with RMS in this case, I understand where he's coming from. So many people seem to have some phobia of accentuating the ethical, freedom and community contexts that the term "free software" implies, preferring the more bitterly pragmatic "open source".
That and this is a very typical RMS rant. This is probably the umpteenth one of the same variation, only with $SOFTWARE being Clang/LLVM in this case.
For the record, I love Clang/LLVM and support BSD licensing. For a lot of software, having an open source development model without the deeper freedom contexts is good enough.