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Defending GCC considered futile

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Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#151

Post by nostrademons »

cynicalkane wrote: post #54
Aqueous wrote: post #33

Despite the inflexibility of RMS' arguments (they grate on me as much as anyone) I feel like his position on continuing to develop GCC without modern features like a fully exposed AST is necessary to keep the "moderate" position where it is. In other words, RMS' radical position is necessary for 'moderate' LLVM to exist. Otherwise we'd still be living in the Borland/Metrowerks/Microsoft world of the 90s - proprietary…

This is false--people are just as likely to respond to opposing arguments with rejection and ideological hardening. This is replicated in psychological studies. In my personal experience, the less the opposing position acknowledges the values of its opponents, the more likely it is to be rejected. Most people reason by mood affiliation and use argumentation as a social tool, so this should not be a surprise. I think…

It's not that people accept the radical arguments, it's that they subconsciously shift your emotional reaction to less radical arguments to make them seem more reasonable.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#152

Post by scott00 »

tedks wrote: post #132
cynicalkane wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false--people are just as likely to respond to opposing arguments with rejection and ideological hardening. This is replicated in psychological studies. In my personal experience, the less the opposing position acknowledges the values of its opponents, the more likely it is to be rejected. Most people reason by mood affiliation and use argumentation as a social tool, so this should not be a surprise. I think…

>In my personal experience, the less the opposing position acknowledges the values of its opponents, the more likely it is to be rejected. As far as I know regarding persuasion psychology, this is false. These are the psychological studies you are appealing to. If you have a more substantiative argument I suggest you cite these, but it'd be news to me. Arguments virtually never convince anyone, so this is all a moot…

> Arguments virtually never convince anyone, so this is all a moot point.

I would tend to agree with you that when two people are arguing, there is very little chance that one will convince the other. However, one of the things I like to do on HN is read arguments between two informed people on a topic in which I myself an uninformed and unopinionated. So for my personal benefit I would urge the people of HN to keep arguing. And to cite your sources.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#153

Post by chimeracoder »

dekhn wrote: post #10
michaelhoffman wrote: post #4

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...

Yeah. What's especially painful is RMS is basically saying "Hey folks, I want to block this until I can research the issue." And then his research is "I don't know anuything about this, can anybody tell me what LLDB is?" My guess is (based on his past statements) that he doesn't browse the web, or browses it through emacs sending mail to him (really!) and doesn't use search so he can't really find out what LLDB is. D…

> My guess is (based on his past statements) that he doesn't browse the web, or browses it through emacs sending mail to him (really!)

Just FYI, pg described his browsing setup at one point a few years ago, and it was actually fairly similar.

(It was in a follow-up comment to "Disconnecting Distraction", if I remember correctly. I don't do it myself, but it can be a great way to force yourself to be productive and only read the things you really want to read, instead of getting sucked into aimless browsing. When you think about it, it's really just a poor man's version of Pocket or Instapaper.)

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#154

Post by leonatan »

longlivegnu wrote: post #55
pjmlp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the UNIX world. In the game development world, embedded systems and desktops we like our IDEs.

I am not sure many computer scientists care about the game development world apart from maybe VR+Other cutting edge prototypes that we could only benefit from if gaming funds it.

Very narrow minded and ignorant, typical of a certain type of developers. Video game development has contributed volumes to algorithm optimization, physics and physics approximation, computer graphics, design, industrial design, astrophysics, etc. Virtually every field of computer science.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#155

Post by maxlybbert »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #135
maxlybbert wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common belief. It is, I believe, the reason Stallman wrote the GPL and the reason Torvalds continues to use the GPL 2. But Eric Raymond convinced me that it's irrelevant ( http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928 ): "If we live in 'Type A' a universe where closed source is more efficient, markets will eventually punish people who take closed source code open. Markets will correspondingly reward people who take open so…

That assumes a company writing its own closed-source software is capable of keeping up with an entire community. If that were the case, we'd have had a proprietary version of the Linux kernel long ago, and it'd have completely replaced Linux in all the areas where Linux currently thrives. Also, assuming the case that Open Source is more efficient, some of us don't want to wait around for inefficient closed-source-bas…

> That assumes a company writing its own closed-source software is capable of keeping up with an entire community. If that were the case, we'd have had a proprietary version of the Linux kernel long ago, and it'd have completely replaced Linux in all the areas where Linux currently thrives.

Uh, yes, that's one of the reasons the license itself doesn't make much of a difference. If you want to fork the Linux kernel and not give back -- and companies do that in our world -- you'll quickly learn that the license is the least of your problems with regard to staying up to date.

> Also, assuming the case that Open Source is more efficient, some of us don't want to wait around for inefficient closed-source-based companies to fold, because they can use the large savings they're sitting on to take a very long time thrashing around and doing damage before dying or adapting.

That's a valid point. Then again, reciprocal licenses are based on the assumption that, fundamentally, they'll get faster results with legal action (or threatened legal action) than the results you can expect from the the added costs of running a fork of an open source project. When your first cease and desist letter works, that's true. Then again, the IBM vs. SCO fiasco showed how long it can take to get vindication from the courts.

> ESR's type-A and type-B universes both presuppose free markets and perfect market efficiency. There's a difference between wanting that and assuming that it's already the case.

You don't have to have perfect market efficiency. Thinking about how things would work in a perfect world is often useful for understanding the imperfect world we actually do live in. The world we live in does involve a very impersonal market that will relentlessly tell you when you're in the wrong business, or trying to do something in a silly way. People have an ability to ignore the market's message, but it certainly exists.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#156

Post by fungos »

josephg wrote: post #49
zanny wrote: post #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 ev…

I'm always confused by this stance. It presupposes that big companies like Apple and Google will at some point become bad actors in the opensource world. (They both contribute huge amounts of code). Even Microsoft is starting to open up their codebase with the release of huge parts of the .NET ecosystem. Frankly, I want the big boys on my side when it comes to opensource code. I want them to use the code I write. Usu…

Narrow and egocentric view of the situation. This is not about developer (your) freedom (to use, to change, to gain over) but is about user freedom. Do a little research about RMS's history and what he defends instead of just reading some (context) limited mailing postings to have your conclusions.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#157

Post by aardvark179 »

vetinari wrote: post #77
pjmlp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the UNIX world. In the game development world, embedded systems and desktops we like our IDEs.

We are working with certain expensive application, developed by one big multinational, that has virtual machine for extending the funtionality by the user (or more realistically, contractor). The supplied IDE for development is Emacs.

Is it a GIS application?

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#158

Post by throwaway90999 »

Anderkent wrote: post #146
throwaway90999 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means contradict me. Do they open source more than 25% of their code written? More than 10%? More than 1%?

That's not what you claimed. You claimed they do not contribute code freely; they certainly do. It might not be a very significant percentage if their code written, but it's a fact that they contribute code to open source projects, and they do not charge for it.

I see the misunderstanding. When I say "contribute code freely" I mean "without restriction."

You are certainly aware that the vast majority of code is under strict restrictions and will be leveraged for competitive/controlling purposes rather than being shared. Employees wishing to freely contribute code in these domains will have their requests denied.

We've both been employed by large SV companies; we both know how this works. The majority of software will be used in an attempt to control the market.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#159

Post by ajarmst »

I continue to be amazed at people buying into the ESR-authored consensual hallucination about his role and importance. His primary creative contribution to the community has been a fictional mythology starring himself.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#160

Post by vetinari »

aardvark179 wrote: post #157
vetinari wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are working with certain expensive application, developed by one big multinational, that has virtual machine for extending the funtionality by the user (or more realistically, contractor). The supplied IDE for development is Emacs.

Is it a GIS application?

Yes, it is.
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