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Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

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Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#181

Post by coryrc »

cwzwarich wrote: post #146
craigching wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the argument made that somehow RMS and the gcc developers are against making gcc more modular. Where is everyone getting that idea, because that's not what I'm reading. Indeed, this quote from David Edelsohn in response to ESR seems to indicate they are interested in making the gcc more modular: >GCC is working toward re-factoring its code base toward a more compositional approach for "toolification". One c…

"Anything that makes it easier to use GCC back ends without GCC front ends--or simply brings GCC a big step closer to a form that would make such usage easy--would endanger our leverage for causing new front ends to be free. Because of this, the GNU Project will in all probability not install such changes, should they be available. This statement reflects a firm conclusion based on a decade of thought." http://gcc.gn…

That's 14 years old. The GP's message is from this year.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#182

Post by bentcorner »

rwg wrote: post #32

When I finally realized that the FSF is really about being a social movement and that creating useful software is a non-primary goal (or maybe even a non-goal), my level of annoyance with RMS greatly decreased. Of course, along with that, my level of give-a-shit about the FSF and the GNU project decreased proportionally. Stallman wants you to use Free software because it's free-as-in-ideology, not because it necessar…

> When I finally realized that the FSF is really about being a social movement and that creating useful software is a non-primary goal (or maybe even a non-goal), my level of annoyance with RMS greatly decreased.

Yes, that's pretty much it: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#183

Post by belorn »

stonemetal wrote: post #155
jjoonathan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLVM is so bad RMS doesn't have a problem with LLVM because it's bad, he has a problem with it because it's good. > the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others No, the biggest hurdles to people caring about copyleft are by far the incompatibilities with accepted practices and existing software that make it a lot of work to comply with copyl…

>What would you have had him do differently? The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code. I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries. Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either. It isn't a zero sum game.

BSD and Konquer are not the adversaries to RMS.

People who threatens others with lawsuit for doing modification or sharing are adversaries to RMS. For example, he seems to dislike Apple because they threatens jailbreakers with million dollar lawsuits and jail, and do not want his code to contribute to that misery.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#184

Post by XorNot »

gillianseed wrote: post #98
XorNot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good take on the deficiencies of Stallman's position here really. Linus stands directly against this sort of idea - his whole take on licensing has always been that he wants to make sure people contribute code back if they modify it, but otherwise can include the kernel in whatever they want - which provides a similar benefit - more people using Linux kernels, more people likely to want to improve Linux ker…

>Linus stands directly against this sort of idea Linus and the rest of the Linux kernel developers make it intentionally hard to keep out-of-tree modules working against the kernel for the same reason that GCC does, which is to have the code included into the main project where it will benefit all end users instead of having proprietary/out-of-tree modules/plugins which are available to a select audience. I can't see…

That's a different problem - namely that they don't want to tie Linux to having a stable ABI.

The side-effect is that it makes it difficult to maintain out-of-tree modules, because people don't fix things as they edit the kernel (if it builds, it builds etc.)

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#185

Post by geocar »

stonemetal wrote: post #155
jjoonathan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLVM is so bad RMS doesn't have a problem with LLVM because it's bad, he has a problem with it because it's good. > the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others No, the biggest hurdles to people caring about copyleft are by far the incompatibilities with accepted practices and existing software that make it a lot of work to comply with copyl…

>What would you have had him do differently? The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code. I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries. Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either. It isn't a zero sum game.

> Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either.

I disagree.

In fact, I think the GPL probably saved the World Wide Web.

That Konquerer was GPL was the single advantage it had over anything else. It used to be a buggier, and slower, and generally worse web browser, but every time someone made an improvement, the GPL made those improvements Free; When Apple improved it, it was the GPL forced them to make those changes available to everyone else, and while the code being available is what helped Google start their web browser, it was the GPL that fed those improvements back into the community.

Perhaps Mozilla (open source, but not GPL) would have remained an acceptable way to search wikipedia, but I struggle to believe it would become good enough to be embedded in nearly every operating system and WWW-capable device.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#186

Post by forgottenpass »

stonemetal wrote: post #155
jjoonathan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLVM is so bad RMS doesn't have a problem with LLVM because it's bad, he has a problem with it because it's good. > the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others No, the biggest hurdles to people caring about copyleft are by far the incompatibilities with accepted practices and existing software that make it a lot of work to comply with copyl…

>What would you have had him do differently? The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code. I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries. Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either. It isn't a zero sum game.

I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries.

"Competitor that through their marketplace success makes us further from our social goal" doesn't have all the same connotations as "advisory", but given their goals I don't see how it's not an accurate descriptor.

No, the software marketplace isn't a zero sum game. I'm not even a believer in free software, but it still frustrates me to no end when someone says "not a zero sum game" in a conversation that is so obviously about market share.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#187

Post by slurry »

gress wrote: post #122
sepeth wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." And I think, that's a better position to be in; I mean, freedom is more important than to have good softwares.

Execept it's not even that. It's a narrow definition of freedom. Free as in socialism vs free as in capitalism.

RMS had a pretty testy interview with Z magazine a few years back. Was very emphatic that his vision of the future included businesses, and swatted down several attempts by the Z people, who wanted to abolish all businesses, to get him to reconsider.

Not bringing this up to argue that RMS is correct or reasonable (here or elsewhere), but I just thought it was interesting. RMS may be an unrealistic utopian, but his unrealistic utopia is some mutant form of liberalism - with property rights and commerce etc. - not communism or even big-s socialism.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#188

Post by dman »

codex wrote: post #167
dman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When do you think the shift from a non-free to free market happened? What brought it about?

It's a function of the size of the market. When Stallman was programming computers, the number of computers was quite small and it was much more expensive to create software. These days, especially after the PC revolution, creating and modifying software is much cheaper, especially relative to the demand for software, which is much higher.

Do you think the widespread availability of a free and high quality compiler had something to do with the PC revolution?

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#189

Post by zbowling »

tzs wrote: post #177
zbowling wrote: post #4

> They have been supported by Apple, the company which hates our freedom so much that its app store for the ithings _requires_ all apps to be nonfree. (*) This is a judgement of the motives of Apple that I do not believe is correct by Stallman and he making a straw man case for it. I don't think that Apple "hates" their freedom. I do believe Apple added the restrictions on having only non-GPL code because they unders…

> I do believe Apple added the restrictions on having only non-GPL code [...] Apple allows GPL code in the App store. There are many GPL apps (both GPLv2 and GPLv3) in the store. If you are using GPL code that you do not own in your app, you do need to get a non-GPL license from the owners to allow Apple to distribute it, and so the code ends up dual licenses--special license for Apple, GPL for everyone else.

Well yah, if you have ownership, you can license it under all the terms you want to different people. Kind of moot.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#190

Post by gillianseed »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #83

> [Clang and LLVM] have been supported by Apple, the company which hates our freedom so much that its app store for the ithings _requires_ all apps to be nonfree. It's worth pointing out that GCC also "has been supported" by Apple, especially around PowerPC support and the PFE implementation. If you can get past the insane "War on Terror" rhetoric, that is.

It's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs at NeXT was a prime example of the benefits of a policy against proprietary linking as Jobs tried to have GCC be the backend of their (NeXT's) proprietary ObjectiveC front end.

He (Jobs) was not allowed to do this due to the licencing (GPL) which is what led to GCC getting a ObjectiveC frontend merged which was then available to all GCC users.

Had Jobs had his way, only NeXT users would have had the benefit of the ObjectiveC front end while NeXT would have enjoyed the benefits of the GCC backend.

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