Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft [LWN.net]

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 18:30 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641)
In reply to: Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft by Cyberax
Parent article: Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

> iDevices and Androids have no GPLv3 software. Whatsoever. And they outnumber personal computers by now.

It is one industry, one datapoint. There is more in this world than smartphones. Stop making wide ranging statements when you really mean very specific usage. Android certainly do have GPLv3 licensed software in numbers, but you may refer to the operating system? Well Android is pretty stripped down, with only a custom Java engine to run the apps. The choice of using apache was maded specifically because HTC and the rest wanted to use an open core model from my recollection. It is an interesting dynamics, and shows a natural usage of permissive licensing. This may have nothing to do with version 3.

Let me help you out a bit. First up there is the boot-loader. Recall how lilo was very popular, but now all distros use Grub? Guess what licenses those two have? Does Google use Lilo for Android? Nope, of course not, they don't use Grub either, and mostly because Grub has a ton of functionality Android does not need. Same with SurfaceFlinger, do you think they did it because of the xorg license? Wow, Google really must hate the X11 license, wonder why Apple likes it... Now over to your favourite glibc, well do you remember the ordeal with Ulrich Drepper refusing patches for using glibc in an embedded setting? Debian forking glibc over to eglibc. Do you think maybe that could have somewhat more to do with bionic than the license? You are a smart guy, I am sure you get the drift. Again, somebody from Google speaking up would be nice. Not saying I know the priorities, but your conclusions are not very convincing to me.

> LGPL with static link exception is fine. GPL for end-user software is also OK-ish.

Hm, I cannot make any sense of what you are trying to say here.

> Nope. Even FreeBSD was built using gcc, there literally was no free alternative. Remember?

Let me help your memory. BSD used to have *drums*, a BSD licensed compiler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_C_Compiler
You really need to get your history straight, copy-left ran the pants of anything BSD had to offer. It is your very good friend Apple and its fat wallet you can thank for BSD having another go at compilers. Seems they have a lot of money to spend on astroturfing these days too, I have never seen so many lies about GCC spreading before. Those unfamiliar with history is bound to repeat the mistakes, and it saddens me that so few care about the history.

>But no large company produces devices with GPLv3. And just how many end-user devices with RHEL are being produced?

and you know why, don't you? Does the name Elop ring any bell with you, at all? Did you have the pleasure of using the N9? A part from that GPLv3 has made success in network routers, Linksys (yes that was Cisco, do they count as large you think?) even marketed it. Any NAS box these days come with Samba, does Hewlett Packard count as large in your book by any chance? This is just getting stupid, I think I will stop here.

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Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 20:56 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (14 responses)

> It is one industry, one datapoint. There is more in this world than smartphones.
Actually, there is not. Smartphones this year outnumbered all other computers, except for microcontrollers.

>Well Android is pretty stripped down, with only a custom Java engine to run the apps.
:facepalm:

And gcc is only a translator from C++ to machine code. And Linux is merely a wrapper over hardware-provided services. And Google is simply an indexer.

>The choice of using apache was maded specifically because HTC and the rest wanted to use an open core model from my recollection.
Nope. Android was designed this way to allow carriers to lock down phones, and total avoidance of GPL was a pre-emptive step to avoid being forced to support GPLv2 forks indefinitely.

>Well Android is pretty stripped down, with only a custom Java engine to run the apps. The choice of using apache was maded specifically because HTC and the rest wanted to use an open core model from my recollection.
Google uses Coreboot which is GPLv2 on Chromebooks. JFYI. Lots of Android devices use U-Boot which is, you guessed it, GPLv2.

> Let me help your memory. BSD used to have *drums*, a BSD licensed compiler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_C_Compiler

No they didn't. The first attempts to use PCC to compile FreeBSD were made in 2007 or so. It has never been used in anger, unlike Clang.

> and you know why, don't you? Does the name Elop ring any bell with you, at all? Did you have the pleasure of using the N9?
So there's no phone with GPLv3 software out there. Even the new Jolla phone does NOT have GPLv3 anywhere, though they have quite a lot of GPL and LGPL software on it.

> A part from that GPLv3 has made success in network routers, Linksys (yes that was Cisco, do they count as large you think?) even marketed it. Any NAS box these days come with Samba, does Hewlett Packard count as large in your book by any chance?
Again, it's either isolated or used in non-core parts. Or in situation where GPLv3 has no bite at all.

So yes, it only reinforces my point: GPLv3 failed miserably.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 22:13 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (8 responses)

> And gcc is only a translator from C++ to machine code

GCC is a compiler collection, it can do much more than Java.

> Android was designed this way to allow carriers to lock down phones, and total avoidance of GPL was a pre-emptive step to avoid being forced to support GPLv2 forks indefinitely.

Sloppy again are we. There is plenty of GPL code in Android as I am sure you know. You mean version 3 I guess. You may or may not be right. Like already mentioned, Android avoids GPL in user space due to it's open core model.

> So there's no phone with GPLv3 software out there. Even the new Jolla phone does NOT have GPLv3 anywhere, though they have quite a lot of GPL and LGPL software on it.

Actually I do believe you will find GPLv3 software on N9, basically from the Debian stuff. But you are right when it comes to Jolla not shipping GPLv3 in shipping images, here I found the documentation for you:
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Architecture#GNU_utilities
Nokia on the other hand was big enough to make a difference, and Microsoft made sure that never happened. I would say Microsoft did a bargain when they got Nokia on board with an exclusive deal, worth every billion. However, GPLv3 software is easily available in abundance on Sailfish, Meego and Android. On a related note, Jolla does ship glibc, did you know that?

> Again, it's either isolated or used in non-core parts. Or in situation where GPLv3 has no bite at all.

You were flat out wrong, and are back-paddling desperately. May I suggest that you just admit it, GPLv3 is not that big of a deal on devices. Sure, there are manufacturers that want to lock-down devices, and they will probably avoid Grub. That's no biggie, Uboot serves them fine.

Just listened to Langley's talk, and it makes me depressed.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 22:33 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (6 responses)

> Sloppy again are we. There is plenty of GPL code in Android as I am sure you know. You mean version 3 I guess. You may or may not be right. Like already mentioned, Android avoids GPL in user space due to it's open core model.
There is _no_ GPL (of any version) in Android images and even no LGPL anymore. Android tools certainly use it.

>However, GPLv3 software is easily available in abundance on Sailfish, Meego and Android.
Sure. They don't limit third-party software, so they can't care less.

>On a related note, Jolla does ship glibc, did you know that?
Which is LGPLv2.1

> You were flat out wrong, and are back-paddling desperately.
Nope.

>May I suggest that you just admit it, GPLv3 is not that big of a deal on devices.
It IS a big deal on devices. So big that big vendors essentially forked the entire FSF stack to avoid it.

>Sure, there are manufacturers that want to lock-down devices
Again, another understatement like "the waves were higher than normal during the tsunami in Japan".

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 22:49 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

LGPL is most certainly there: KHTML^H^H^H^HWebkit^H^H^H^HBlink^H^H^H^Hwhat-the-name-if-this-thing-today still includes few LGPL-licensed files. But all the new development there uses BSD (not Apache, BTW, but BSD) thus it's pretty limited and constrained.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 23:12 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (4 responses)

> There is _no_ GPL (of any version) in Android images and even no LGPL anymore. Android tools certainly use it.

I believe linux is still GPL, and it is a part of Android.

> Sure. They don't limit third-party software, so they can't care less.

They provided it in repos themselves I believe.

But now I am afraid I have to call it a day..

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 1:14 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> I believe linux is still GPL, and it is a part of Android.

Ah yes, apart from Linux itself, of course. But Linux is an exception somewhat - it has a non-existent GPL enforcement and it's also firmly in GPLv2 only camp.

However, there _are_ Android implementations that do not even use Linux - Blackberry runs their own Android simulator atop QNX.

> They provided it in repos themselves I believe.
Links?

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 3:08 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses)

> But Linux is an exception somewhat - it has a non-existent GPL enforcement

Not true. netfilter is enforced by its copyright holder, and several other kernel copyright holders have thrown their lot in with the SFLC. I'd guess that the only piece of GPLed software with *more* license enforcement than the Linux kernel is busybox.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 3:16 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Yet binary-only drivers exist in basically every Linux mobile device. And that violates even Linus' tit-for-tat requirement.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 6:55 UTC (Wed) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]

> Ah yes, apart from Linux itself, of course. But Linux is an exception somewhat

Down to semantics are we. U-boot not being part of the image you mean? What are you trying to prove, that what Google forked and made themselves in user space on Android was permissively licensed? We agreed on that already. Just forgot, Uboot is GPLv2+ so available under GPLv2, but also available under GPLv3. A tiny fact you jumped over earlier in this thread.

> Links?

Dig yourself, I cannot fathom that detail making any difference for you at all.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 12:04 UTC (Wed) by jani (subscriber, #74547) [Link]

> Actually I do believe you will find GPLv3 software on N9

Nokia did not ship GPLv3 software on the N9.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 20, 2015 17:38 UTC (Tue) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link] (4 responses)

Del- wrote:

>> A part from that GPLv3 has made success in network routers, Linksys (yes that was Cisco, do they count as large you think?) even marketed it. Any NAS box these days come with Samba, does Hewlett Packard count as large in your book by any chance?
> Again, it's either isolated or used in non-core parts. Or in situation where GPLv3 has no bite at all.

So let me get this straight. You're saying that in a NAS box, Samba - the GPLv3+ SMB1/2/3 implementation that ALLOWS THE BOX TO FUNCTION AND IS THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF THE PRODUCT is a 'non-core part'.

Hmmmm. I think you might want to look at the lifeboats. The argument is desperately listing and taking on water at an alarming rate :-).

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 20, 2015 17:41 UTC (Tue) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link]

Oh sorry Del-, I mis-quoted. It was Cyberax (who is well known - at least to me - for such amazing leaps of logic when it comes to disparaging GPLv3 :-) who made that argument, not you.

Please accept my apologies :-).

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 20, 2015 20:56 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Your core part is something that you differentiate on from your competitors. For SAN the most interesting part is their core storage management which is far out of reach of GPLv3.

For end-user NAS boxes companies usually have no differentiating features at all (except the components price that you can get from your Chinese suppliers). So the vendors don't mind putting GPLv3 on them.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 21, 2015 16:09 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Looks like you're conflating "core" and "differentiate" there. SMB is a core feature for any kind of NAS storage box. Now, with Samba out there, it may be hard for vendors to differentiate themselves on it, so they have to find some other feature that differentiates them (which may also be a core, required feature for a NAS to have, but also need not be).

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 21, 2015 17:32 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

> Your core part is something that you differentiate on from your competitors.

Nope. That's your code *competency*, which is a business/management term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_competency.

The usual engineering interpretation of the term is very different, and more in line with the FEMA definition: https://www.fema.gov/core-capabilities. Basically a core "part" is something you *require* to achieve a goal, not something that distinguishes you from the rest.

At least that's how I see it.