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Defending GCC considered futile

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Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#181

Post by copsarebastards »

lultimouomo wrote: post #3

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…

Saying Stallman isn't qualified to steer major projects because he isn't familiar with IDEs is a pretty weird point to make. Emacs is a far more advanced environment than any IDE I have used, and often the so-called "features" of IDEs are to deal with self-created problems: Java/C# build tooling in IDEs, for example, is there to deal with the fact that the build processes for these languages is massively overcomplicated. I can't speak for Stallman, but I am confident that I'm accurately representing the opinions of a lot of Emacs users when I say that IDEs provide a leaky abstraction over systemic design problems rather than solving them.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#182

Post by DannyBee »

throwaway90999 wrote: post #158
Anderkent wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

"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. "

?????? None of this is true. I mean, literally none of this. I don't even know where to begin.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#183

Post by kibwen »

copsarebastards wrote: post #178

I agree with Eric Raymond that GCC probably can't beat Clang. However, I don't agree that this means we should just jump on the LLVM train. The world still needs GNU. And LLVM isn't GNU. The GNU community has historically held dominance in the compiler field, so this is an uncomfortable time. We can no longer rely on the popularity of GCC to keep GNU in the forefront. However, this doesn't mean we should just give up…

The implementations of new languages aren't being released as GPL because the process of introducing a new programming language is already a nearly insurmountable task. To this end, language authors seek every advantage they can get. Nobody's ever chosen a programming language by virtue of the fact that its implementation was GPL, but I can easily see people ruling out such a programming language out of fear that the use of such an implementation will infect their own code with GPL (I fully acknowledge that this fear is unwarranted if your licensing is set up properly, but it actually can be rather tricky to get right and most people are rightfully fearful of interpreting this sort of thing on their own).

At the same time no developer of a fledgling language is going to worry about someone coming in and taking their permissively-licensed code without contributing back, because getting to the stage where someone cares enough to seriously fork your language already implies an enormous relative degree of success.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#184

Post by twic »

pekk wrote: post #134

I strongly disagree with RMS on some issues (like Snowden) and I don't share his hard line on proprietary software either. But RMS is just a particular kind of animal. I respect the need for that animal in a diverse ecosystem and I respect the reasoning behind free software. In particular, I think gcc has played an essential role in providing free software to users because it is licensed under the GPL. The BSD licens…

> The BSD license is great for less important things, but the moment giant corporations have engineered the whole "open source" ecosystem so that they can distribute forks of all the basic build tools without contributing changes to the public where we can see and influence them - that's the moment we've handed over the keys to the kingdom. You have to be pretty out of touch with history not to see that point.

So when in history has this actually occurred?

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#186

Post by twic »

throwaway90999 wrote: post #69
josephg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Microsoft is opening their codebase because they've been crushed by the enormous efforts of open source. This concession was hard won over the course of decades. Apple and Google do not contribute code freely, nor do they contribute a significant amount of their code. The contributions are limited to areas in which an advantage exists. One only has to look at the machinations present in other development platforms to…

> Consider what's happened with Java in recent years.

What has happened with Java in recent years?

One thing i can think of is that the 'official' Sun/Oracle JDK has gone from being closed source, to having a second-class GPL'd derivative, to being built on a GPL'd core. The amount of proprietary closed-source code has gone from 4% to 1% to nothing that doesn't have a free replacement today.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#188

Post by throwaway90999 »

twic wrote: post #186
throwaway90999 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is opening their codebase because they've been crushed by the enormous efforts of open source. This concession was hard won over the course of decades. Apple and Google do not contribute code freely, nor do they contribute a significant amount of their code. The contributions are limited to areas in which an advantage exists. One only has to look at the machinations present in other development platforms to…

> Consider what's happened with Java in recent years. What has happened with Java in recent years? One thing i can think of is that the 'official' Sun/Oracle JDK has gone from being closed source, to having a second-class GPL'd derivative, to being built on a GPL'd core. The amount of proprietary closed-source code has gone from 4% to 1% to nothing that doesn't have a free replacement today.

> What has happened with Java in recent years?

Your feigned ignorance is disingenuous. An enormous legal battle over the platform took place within the past decade.

We are very lucky that the outcome was favorable and that the platform has been able to continue to improve.

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#189

Post by throwaway90999 »

DannyBee wrote: post #182
throwaway90999 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

"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. " ?????? None of this is true. I mean, literally none of this. I don't even know where to begin.

This isn't a complicated statement. Why are you struggling with it?

Google does not open source the VAST majority of their code -- it remains tightly restricted. Surely agree this is an accurate statement?

Re: Defending GCC considered futile

#190

Post by j_s »

GalacticDomin8r wrote: post #139
j_s wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not very familiar with the world of shader compilers, but it seems like you have provided the most concrete example I've heard yet of how GCC benefited in the long term in a way that LLVM/clang didn't. I would love to hear from anyone with more expertise in this realm who might be able to dispute this claim in any way... otherwise this seems to be a smoking gun in GCC's favor!

I'm not sure about the exact conclusion you seem to draw but it seems to be something like "GPL projects tend to have better outcomes than non-GPL". The whole point of the thread doesn't support that conclusion coming directly from the GCC brain trust. It's only natural that niche GCC users are going to hang around the longest. I'd also like to note LLVM/clang didn't gain large non-apple marketshare until GCC adopted…

Mostly I was looking for a specific/practical current example where using LLVM allowed a company to release something closed-source, where they would have been forced to open it if they used GCC.

The rubber apparently meets the road with the NVidia shader compiler.

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