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Defending GCC considered futile

lists.gnu.org

11–20 of 209 posts

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#11
So this was a discussion in /r/linux last week about LLVM and GCC et al, so I'm just reposting my statements on why a world where GCC is irrelevant is bad:

It takes little effort on Apples or Googles or Microsofts part to take advantage of an LLVM dominated world to close off their own changes to it and try to force developers to use their own proprietary LLVM distributions on their own operating systems. It stops every other company in the future from taking advantage of all the great LLVM tech to implement their own CPUs in terms of LLVM IR, so they never need to publish their ISA and they can lock down their platform with a blob LLVM of their own. The only thing stopping any of that from happening is GCC being a still competitive alternative.

If LLVM came to dominate the compiler scene to such a degree that GCC were irrelevant, it opens the flood gates to any major company forking LLVM into a proprietary paid for compiler that they require on their OS to profit from. It lets you do anything from what Apple is already doing with Swift, where you create a programming language with a proprietary compiler, or you could go from the other end and implement a proprietary translation unit so that you never need to publish your ISA (something Nvidia never does) but that allows all the LLVM compilers to target it.

Right now, nobody can close off their LLVM contributions because a hobbled and fractured LLVM ecosystem is one that cannot overcome GCC. In the same way Apple and Google had to cooperate on webkit until it was so dominate they were in a position to fork and do their own things with it once Gecko was rendered effectively irrelevant, but the difference is that webkit was LGPL and Clang is its own permissive license - they still cannot directly modify the free software parts without redistribution, so it is harder to make a proprietary webkit, but Apple surely has succeeded since they have their own proprietary patchset on top of trunk webkit nowadays.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#12
Already my own experiments suggest that LLVM is a superior compiler, by every metric I know of,

I know OpenMP/Clang, but as far as I know OpenMP is not upstreamed in clang yet, is it? If not, it's not superior yet in scientific computing :).

But it will happen soon. And at the very least, LLVM's approach has created a large ecosystem that gcc did not have.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#14

Thankfully, Emacs maintainer Stefan Monnier is being sensible about this: > As mentioned earlier, in any case I will happily accept and install LLDB support into gud.el. So as long as I'm Emacs maintainer, your opinion on whether this might ruin the FSF's goals are not relevant. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00...

I read a big caveat in the clause "So as long as I'm Emacs maintainer"

Then again I first became aware of this latest cycle when I think a message from him threatening a fork became a Hacker News topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8861360), followed by several others with a lot of discussion.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#15
post #6

> Already my own experiments suggest that LLVM is a superior compiler, by every metric I know of Except that it isn't copyleft, which is one of the most important metrics to Stallman, FSF et al, and is why they're unlikely to stop defending it.

If clang/LLVM caught up in generated code performance to GCC then I must admit that is news to me.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#16

ESR seems a bit over the line with this mail, but what never ceases to amaze me is how RMS is disconnected with the present technology: >From its name, I guess that LLDB is a noncopylefted debugger and that some might intend it to replace GDB. But I don't know if that is so. This is just one of many, in the recent arguments he has stated several times that he doesn't understand how automated code refactoring works, h…

It's not just that his knowledge is outdated, it's also that his philosophical principles will always take precedence over everything else, which includes sound and/or pragmatic technological decisions.

I'm not fond of esr in general but he's spot on with this post.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#17
This quarrel should be considered in context of the LLDB patch being submitted to gud.el.

For those who want to read it from the start: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg002...

What made it a mega-thread was when RMS weighed in: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg003...

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#18

ESR seems a bit over the line with this mail, but what never ceases to amaze me is how RMS is disconnected with the present technology: >From its name, I guess that LLDB is a noncopylefted debugger and that some might intend it to replace GDB. But I don't know if that is so. This is just one of many, in the recent arguments he has stated several times that he doesn't understand how automated code refactoring works, h…

We're talking about a C compiler and debugger. Lots of very technically knowledgable people shun IDEs and automated refactoring in that space.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#19
post #13

I don't know why you would make this argument now. Stallman argued clearly in January why copyleft was more important to him than technical superiority. https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00247.html

Which is kind of sad, since the major reason why GCC took off in the first place was because it was technically superior.

http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/GccEarlyEnthusi...

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#20

This is pretty much the perfect moment for two egos like RMS and ESR to clash. RMS is already getting a lot of flak for expressing his fear of GCC being displaced in such a manner, whereas ESR is well known for his disliking RMS, to put it mildly.

It is not clear that RMS is driven by ego. He's motivated by a very clear goal to keep free software free. Free as in freedom free. As for ESR, well, yup, that's an ego that is sufficient in size to have a gravitational pull. http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2000082800620OPCYKN

I think this is an unuseful definition of ego. I had a significant degree of contact with RMS in the period leading up to the launch of GNU, including being one of his roommates when he formally launched it, and I assure you he's very seriously ego driven. Are not his expounding etc. of his Free Software philosophy, a rather big thing as in a set of principles etc., the actions of a man very certain about himself?

I think you're just perceiving a difference in how it's expressed by each of them, e.g. one reply is that ESR has a very clear goal of increasing the quality of software. Which for me is the big difference between "Free" and "Open" software.

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