Any actual statements from the FSF?

Posted Oct 3, 2008 14:22 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: Any actual statements from the FSF? by patrick_g
Parent article: Plugging into GCC

Did you check the date on that mail?

Any actual statements from the FSF?

Posted Oct 3, 2008 14:24 UTC (Fri) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link] (2 responses)

The ability to change his mind has never been RMS's defining personality trait.

Any actual statements from the FSF?

Posted Oct 3, 2008 14:41 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

That's a content-free statement.

What is true is that RMS's agenda and ideology have not changed significantly since the 1980s. However, everything he does is to promote his cause of free software. If he believes that in certain circumstances a "weaker" licence is more suitable for that cause -- eg, LGPL for glibc, BSD for ogg vorbis -- he says so openly (google for statements in both cases). The circumstances with GCC in the 1980s were not the same as in 2000, and are not the same today. If a convincing argument were made that (a) GCC would compete better with proprietary compilers if a plugin mechanism were available, and (b) the plugin mechanism would be unlikely to suffer misuse, either because it is not in the interest of plugin writers or because the licence was carefully worded -- I believe he would not object.

Yes, but it does not mean they NEVER change

Posted Oct 3, 2008 17:41 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

For example GCC 4.3 uses ECJ for Java compiler (instead of GCC's own frontend). It was not an easy sell, but in the end RMS agreed.