Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

gcc.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 338 posts

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#211

Post by mwcampbell »

rimantas wrote: post #172
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call ideology I like to think of as taking the long view. The primary goal is to create software that will remain useful. Time and time RMS has been proven right about the detrimental consequences of non-free software, but usually over the span of many, many years. Non-free software has a habit of working well and doing what you want right until it doesn't and then royally screws you. You can only be pragmat…

It is really very funny to read your and similar comments and to think why clang was created.

I don't get it. Why do you think clang was created, and what does that have to do wwith the GP?

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#212

Post by com2kid »

fleitz wrote: post #116
drcube wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clang IS free software, and RMS agrees. The difference is that GCC discourages proprietary extensions and subsequent lockdown.

> I would guess they describe their work as "open source" and do not talk about freedom. Actually he doesn't....he considers Clang/LLVM to be open source and not free, Clang/LLVM does not restrict users from developing their own extensions and licensing them as they see fit which ironically makes the software not free (according to the RMS ideological software freedom purity test).

Clang/LLVM does not restrict users from developing their own extensions and licensing them as they see fit which ironically makes the software not free (according to the RMS ideological software freedom purity test).

This restricts users freedom, that is his point.

GPL is not about the rights of the programmer, it is about the rights of the end user.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#213

Post by smithzvk »

stonemetal wrote: post #198
forgottenpass wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

It isn't about market share it is about users getting what they need. Sure you can measure users in terms of market share but that doesn't make it about market share.

To RMS and the FSF, what users need/deserve is Free Software.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#214

Post by chongli »

Tloewald wrote: post #176
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…

I find it telling that RMS explicitly has a problem with LLVM because it helps private companies "as well as us" instead of only helping us. It's literally zero-sum for him. He doesn't want companies to benefit in any way from open source. I think there's a big problem with copyright and software -- the goal of copyright is to provide public goods, but the public goods that copyright protects is the source code, not…

No, rms doesn't really care about source code. He cares about user freedom. He wants every user of software to have the same freedom to experiment, modify and redistribute that its original developers had. Placing source code in escrow would not accomplish any of these goals.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#215

Post by nycticorax »

"[The Clang and LLVM developers] object to the measures we have taken to defend freedom because they see the inconvenience of them and do not recognize (or don't care about) the need for them."

I would call this an Orwellian use of language. Stallman and the FSF have adopted a particular definition of "freedom", which is a good deal more particular that the usual definition, but they seem to consistently act as if it was the one and only definition, and therefore that anyone opposed to it is opposed to freedom.

Nevertheless, on one reasonable definition of "freedom", permissive licenses are more free than copyleft licenses. On another reasonable definition (the FSFs), copyleft licenses are more free than permissive licenses.

The statement quoted above implicitly assumes that there is only one definition of freedom, and it's the one the FSF favors.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#216

Post by com2kid »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #64

I am surprised he isn't railing against all the folks selling GCC for extortionate rates to the embedded community. IAR, KEIL, others, $3,000 - $6,000 for a "development tool" which is 99% gcc and 1% some startup code the vendor wrote. Nice margins I guess.

This is perfectly valid, selling GPL software is fine if you can find someone to pay for them. Wrapping them up in a nice installer and selling a support package, also A-OK, and a frequently recommended business model. Free software doesn't mean free as in price, it is free as in freedom.

Keil is a bit different in that you are also paying for their IDE and debugger and such, which are of course non-Free.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#217

Post by jamesaguilar »

fleitz wrote: post #156
drcube wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you even know who Richard Stallman is?

Yes, I just imagined that despite his polemic nature there were still other people who could put up with dealing with him who also were part of the FSF and therefore the FSF could hold positions divergent from those of RMS. If the FSF consists solely of the opinions of RMS then I retract the previous statement and would say that the page mentioned expresses an opinion inconsistent with what is expressed in the email.

Generally speaking, the FSF and RMS agree. Nothing in the thread is inconsistent with this. RMS observes that the NCSA isn't copyleft, which is true, but that's a different dimension than free versus non-free.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#218

Post by sparkie »

mhurron wrote: post #202
sparkie wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it more important even if it allows somebody to remotely disable the breaks on your car while you're doing 50mph? Or perhaps disabling your camera while you're being assaulted by a police officer? What about the predator who's monitoring your children's activities and location because they downloaded a game? I picked some pretty harsh possibilities there that seem a little dystopian, but I wouldn't rule any of the…

Yes, software working for me is more important than the theoretical ability change or rewrite the software in some vague idea of source code freedom. You are aware that all your attempted examples could simply be called 'not working' when evaluating the software.

It's a bit too late to find out if the software was working for you after the fact though. You can only evaluate the software in the first place if you have freedom 1, otherwise, you are going on hearsay, or this absurd notion that complete strangers are trustworthy by default.

I'm also not sure how I could say software is working for me if I must first agree to be dictated the terms of it's use, and agree that the vendor may dictate any new terms in the future, which I must agree to in advance.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#219

Post by skywhopper »

hacknat wrote: post #61
kwantam wrote: post #5

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)…

If LLVM is so bad why are the people who make it so much easier to work with? You shall know a tree by it's fruits. It wouldn't bother me one way or another whether LLVM was copyleft or not, the people who run it are more pleasant to work with. I think the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others. Nobody wants to work with a curmudgeon.

Does RMS go trolling on dev lists for permissively-licensed projects? The FSF has been around for decades with the same goal. ESR comes in and starts needling over the philosophy behind the GPL on dev lists. Who's showing disrespect to whom again?

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#220

Post by randallu »

aurelius wrote: post #90

"The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers -- so that all contribution to LLVM directly helps proprietary software as much as it helps us." See, this is why I hate Stallman's position on anything software. It's based on irrational thinking derived from a flawed ideology. Since LLVM is not copylefted, EVERYONE…

It's interesting that the advantage for LLVM is that it was used to create a compiler for a processor with a secret and proprietary instruction set.

If NVIDIA had to use GCC (surely they'd have just done their own instead, but for the sake of argument) then we'd all get to learn more about their architecture and maybe make compilers for different languages that natively target their processors...

Post reply on HN