Yay for Clang

Posted Jan 27, 2026 9:20 UTC (Tue) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
In reply to: Yay for Clang by mb
Parent article: GNU C Library 2.43 released

I am not talking about timing. I am talking about the idea that I can create new APIs and demand that people use them.

A walled garden refers to a closed, controlled ecosystem, where a single operator dictates access applications, and infrastructure, restricting external, non-approved services

The issue is when things work fine until incompatibility is introduced. And even this is ok unless you resist attempts from others to bring compatibility back.

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Yay for Clang

Posted Jan 27, 2026 10:42 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

I am talking about the idea that I can create new APIs and demand that people use them.

In FOSS generally, this is extremely hard to do unless you provide all the developer time for the projects people care about. You can create a new API, but unless it solves a problem that people have, you'll just get ignored no matter how many demands you make.

And that then makes calling anything that's FOSS a "walled garden" quite an entitled position to hold; you're saying simultaneously that the same entity does all the work that you're depending on without asking for payment from you, while also not doing it to the standard you want them to do it to. You could break this by providing people who do more work than the "walled garden" owner, for example - but you're not doing so, while complaining that someone who provides the labour to make things happen isn't doing what you want.