Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Posted Feb 12, 2015 14:36 UTC (Thu) by ejr (subscriber, #51652)Parent article: Emacs and LLDB
I personally know of proprietary companies jumping on LLVM for the core with their non-free "value add" on top. They're having to re-invent things gcc already supports, and they're not releasing those. (Intel's OpenMP work isn't the first... Thankfully Intel is stepping up here.) These company projects are *not* giving back and are trying to lock up users with proprietary languages and extensions. If that isn't an attack on user freedom, I don't know what is.
But LLVM itself is *NOT* attacking GNU projects, and I doubt if any of the folks working on LLVM in the open are anti-GNU. I doubt if RMS considers that the concern. I suspect his concern lies with the lack of copyleft protection in a core area where companies related to LLVM have attempted license shenanigans.
Posted Feb 12, 2015 17:46 UTC (Thu)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link] (2 responses)
I don't think RMS knows what companies related to LLVM have been doing, but he certainly understands that LLVM is a threat to copyleft (as you pointed out, GCC, together with Linux, is probably the most successful copylefted program) and as such to the GNU project's vision of software freedom.
Posted Feb 19, 2015 19:52 UTC (Thu)
by dakas (guest, #88146)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Feb 19, 2015 20:35 UTC (Thu)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
If, in order to utilize $specific_feature, you are forced to use a proprietary fork of LLVM, it doesn't matter how open/free the "central" part is, or how open or rapidly said central part is developed/improved. You are completely at the mercy of whomever provided that proprietary fork.
Look at Android if you want to see another example of how little anyone actually gives back to the "open/free" central core, and how you're generally forced to rely on proprietary forks if you want to utilize the vast majority of the devices on the market.
Posted Feb 12, 2015 18:24 UTC (Thu)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (21 responses)
And this is the crux of things. It doesn't matter that LLVM itself is "open source" if you're forced to use a specific proprietary fork in order to accomplish something meaningful.
Posted Feb 21, 2015 23:04 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (20 responses)
I'm not arguing in favour of proprietary forks, I'm just more accepting of the economic realities that drive them. I would love however, to see a version of BSD that forced companies to distribute stuff as source on request. "You can distribute my code as part of a proprietary-copyrighted system so long as all your customers get the full source of their system on request".
The intention would be to protect customers should the software house go bust ... far too many closed-source programs become abandon-ware leaving customers up a gum tree ...
Cheers,
Posted Feb 22, 2015 2:19 UTC (Sun)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
FWIW, You just basically described the GPLv2.
(Though v3 is better at ensuring you can actually do something with the source code you've received..)
Posted Feb 22, 2015 2:36 UTC (Sun)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (18 responses)
...as opposed to being uneconomic to develop the whole thing from scratch, rather than taking advantage of a very large body of code they didn't have to pay for?
Copyleft licenses are the only meaningful way to ensure that the software commons is not neglected. Of course, that presumes one cares about the commons.
Posted Feb 22, 2015 2:43 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (17 responses)
The only answer is: "This package is indispensable". Right now there are basically no such relevant packages anymore.
That's a glorious victory, methinks.
Posted Feb 22, 2015 14:40 UTC (Sun)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (8 responses)
So...fund the development of everything yourself, instead of freeloading off of others' work. Somehow I suspect that will have an even greater effect on your business model.
I think Donald Becker (who wrote the majority of the earlier Linux network drivers) said it best -- when asked why he "gave away" so much work for free, his response was that he got the rest of the Linux kernel in return, and it was a great bargain.
> That's a glorious victory, methinks.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm not looking forward to the next round of the BSD wars, where nearly everyone "value-added" themselves into mutual irrelevance in the pursuit of short-term economic advantage.
Posted Feb 22, 2015 23:48 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (7 responses)
> I think Donald Becker (who wrote the majority of the earlier Linux network drivers) said it best -- when asked why he "gave away" so much work for free, his response was that he got the rest of the Linux kernel in return, and it was a great bargain.
Except that then GPLv3 came out and the companies got the message attached to it: "Cower on your knees, you stupid companies and thank us we don't require you to be publicly whipped to use our glorious software! It's not like you have alternatives. BWHAHAHA!"
> Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm not looking forward to the next round of the BSD wars, where nearly everyone "value-added" themselves into mutual irrelevance in the pursuit of short-term economic advantage.
Posted Feb 23, 2015 1:27 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (6 responses)
Android is a really lousy example, because the AOSP bears little semblance to what's actually on a random device one can purchase, and except in rare instances, "collaboration" is purely one-way, in the sense that every six months or so, Google performs a massive code dump on everyone.
Hadoop and the other Apache projects are independently governed, there's actual collaboration involved, and require an CLA (with explicit copyright and patent grants) in order to participate. Additionally, the Apache license has explicit patent grants and mutual-assured-destruction clauses that were the basis for what went into the eeeeevil GPLv3.
> Clang has been here for several years by now. So far there are no signs of proliferation of "value-added" crap.
Just off the top of my head, Apple's entire Swift language infrastructure, ARM's proprietary compilers, nVidia and AMD's shader compilers. More will undoubtedly come in time, and I'm willing to put a few dollars on a wager that in the long run LLVM will eventually be done in by a couple of big players throwing patents around in attempt to protect their "value-add" turfs.
Posted Feb 23, 2015 1:48 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (5 responses)
Patent MAD is fine with most companies, so that's also not a point. Besides, Apache License has much milder language than GPLv3 in that regard.
> Just off the top of my head, Apple's entire Swift language infrastructure, ARM's proprietary compilers, nVidia and AMD's shader compilers.
So yes, there are certainly dark corners with proprietary forks of LLVM, but they are utterly insignificant.
I'd wager that there's no risk of significant proprietary forks of LLVM and other liberally-licensed projects. It just doesn't pay.
Posted Feb 23, 2015 5:45 UTC (Mon)
by magila (guest, #49627)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Feb 23, 2015 6:00 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Feb 23, 2015 6:41 UTC (Mon)
by magila (guest, #49627)
[Link]
Posted Feb 23, 2015 13:01 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (1 responses)
It requires a CLA in order to *contribute upstream* but there's no "poison pill" clause in LLVM's license that prevents you from going after other users of LLVM without also losing the rights to use it yourself. That won't protect from NPEs (ie true trolls) but it's at least a start.
> Swift is likely to be open sourced soon.
That's really not much of a counterpoint. But we shall see, in any case.
> ARM proprietary compilers are pretty much dead.
Not by a very long shot. I know this because my employer just re-upped their licenses to the ARM compilers, which as of v6 are built on top of LLVM. Which brought many improvements, but it's still just as proprietary as before -- We stop paying, we lose the ability to take advantage of our own work.
> AMD mainlined their LLVM shader compiler
Oh, that's news to me, good for them.
> and NVidia uses a completely proprietary infrastructure (no LLVM) for their internal OpenCL system.
I'm sorry, nVidia is more credible than you: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-llvm-compiler
> So yes, there are certainly dark corners with proprietary forks of LLVM, but they are utterly insignificant.
That's how it always starts.
> I'd wager that there's no risk of significant proprietary forks of LLVM and other liberally-licensed projects. It just doesn't pay.
Come on, you've been around long enough to know that tangible short-term gains nearly always trump longer-term views.
Posted Feb 23, 2015 13:10 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
> I'm sorry, nVidia is more credible than you: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-llvm-compiler
However, it compiles into an intermediate language which is later optimized and executed by proprietary NVidia infrastructure.
> Come on, you've been around long enough to know that tangible short-term gains nearly always trump longer-term views.
Posted Mar 15, 2015 5:44 UTC (Sun)
by zenaan (guest, #3778)
[Link] (7 responses)
Why would you use software that someone else provides?
Go choose a proprietary software toolchain/ packages/ etc! Yes, that will incur proprietary licensing, per-seat distribution costs, support contract to get bugs fixed, and more!
Very appropriate for you to "suffer" such proprietary software grievances, since ...
> disclose my proprietary code? Even more,
... you seem to be all about developing your prietary code, and ...
> it might actually deny me some business models.
Business models are king! Profit rules! The only thing that matters is your right to make money.
Sounds like Cyberax is a corporation.
> The only answer is: "This package is indispensable".
Victory for persistence of potential for statute-enforced artificial monopolies ... ah, am I supposed to be enthusiastic?
Cyberax, your monetary and individual proprietary artificial (as in only in existence because of state-enforced statute laws) so-called "rights" appears to trump, in your mind, community, shared commons, the liberty part of libre-software and the like. You do know they say corporations are sociopathic in nature?
>> Not by a very long shot. I know this because my employer just re-upped their
Yet you "Cyberax" are the one promoting proprietary rights?!
> Anyway, do they contain any significant improvements?
Monetary and utilitarian "rights" or "arguments" seem to be your stock in trade at the moment.
"Cyberax", I didn't know you were such a proprietary-slut. Sad day...
Zenaan
Posted Mar 15, 2015 9:17 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (6 responses)
>> it might actually deny me some business models.
> The only thing that matters is your right to make money.
> Sounds like Cyberax is a corporation.
> Cyberax, your monetary and individual proprietary artificial (as in only in existence because of state-enforced statute laws) so-called "rights" appears to trump, in your mind, community, shared commons, the liberty part of libre-software and the like.
> You do know they say corporations are sociopathic in nature?
...
Ok, I'm back. Another social compact is destroyed, another community ruined and the world has become just a little bit more cruel. A nice day, all in all.
> Monetary and utilitarian "rights" or "arguments" seem to be your stock in trade at the moment.
1) Saner allocation of humankind's resources, avoiding unnecessary duplication of efforts and preserving the collective knowledge for everyone to use.
If it's the first one, then liberally licensed projects clearly win over the GPL. The Free Software movement has shown that the open source development model is clearly superior for pretty much any "commodity" software (except games).
So corporations are now vigorously contributing to liberally licensed projects, while lots of GPL projects are stagnating.
Posted Mar 15, 2015 10:08 UTC (Sun)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (1 responses)
and lots of GPL software is getting corporations "vigorously contributing" to them and lots of liberally licensed projects are stagnating.
(by the way, you do need to differentiate between GPLv2 and GPLv3+, there isn't "The GPL" any longer)
the real test for liberally licensed projects is to see if they survive after some of their developers take the software proprietary to found a company or if the project stagnates.
Some communities survive this, some don't. Until it happens, there's no practical difference between the program being licensed BSD or GPLv2
Posted Mar 15, 2015 22:43 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Practically the only major exception is Linux vs BSDs.
> (by the way, you do need to differentiate between GPLv2 and GPLv3+, there isn't "The GPL" any longer)
> the real test for liberally licensed projects is to see if they survive after some of their developers take the software proprietary to found a company or if the project stagnates.
Posted Mar 15, 2015 12:25 UTC (Sun)
by zenaan (guest, #3778)
[Link] (3 responses)
You say "proprietary code" is "sometimes a valid choice". I think I understand your position, yet I have no example to back up your position, so "Cyberax", I continue to hold your position is weak, pathetic, subversive and clandestinely premised.
By "proprietary code licensing is a valid choice", do you mean that your creativity is insufficient to otherwise provide for your survival by working commercially with libre/ copyleft licensed code, software stacks and corporations, and yet that your creativity is just high enough to eek out a survival by commercially licensing your code as proprietary?
I guess living in a world of amazing people, awesome opportunities and endless creativity in ethical and honourable abundance is just not your cup o' tea then eh?
Poor soul indeed ... locked in proprietary worlds of survival of the fittest, paucity of ideas and the meager supplicating 'protections' racket provided by those "awesome" government statute laws (that which creates proprietary monopoly rights at all).
Since you have no statutory right to combine "your proprietary code" with copyleft licensed code, your remaining option is to exercise your creativity to code without or wrest some yet-unexploited blood from the rock of BSD-licensed code, locking your results in a vault of survival from this cold, cruel world - might as well stand on the shoulders of some giant eh?
Now this looks like it ought to be sarcasm:
- Usually, when an LWN poster uses sarcasm, there's a refreshing, insightful, cutting and/ or poignant insight behind such use. Instead we see here pretense of sophistication masking belligerence - don't get me wrong and I grant s/he may have missed it, "I do respect your right to your opinion", but on the one hand Cyberax decries a principled approach ("forcing your ideology") to choosing how to develop software and/or a software stack, and yet he/she is unrelenting, unbalanced and contradictory in his/her own position... pretty sad effort really.
I take us back to "Cyberax"'s "glorious victory":
I called him on his/her sociopathic position, and he/she uses sarcasm to try and laugh it off thus:
Exactly how does sarcasm either justify or rationally brush off that sociopathic position, "Cyberax"?
Zenaan
Posted Mar 15, 2015 12:30 UTC (Sun)
by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562)
[Link]
Can you tone down the ad-hominem please? It's fine to disagree with Cyberax' position, in fact I do so more often than not, but these personal attacks seem to be uncalled for.
Posted Mar 16, 2015 1:39 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
I'm just observing that:
2) One of the best possible solutions is to make it profitable for multiple companies to work on a single project.
3) Liberal licenses are better in achieving this.
Do you have any objections? Decrying that the world is unfair and the evil corporations are intent on killing freedom is simply counter-productive.
Posted Mar 16, 2015 20:08 UTC (Mon)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
Posted Feb 13, 2015 8:42 UTC (Fri)
by salimma (subscriber, #34460)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Feb 13, 2015 14:34 UTC (Fri)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
Posted Feb 15, 2015 2:23 UTC (Sun)
by cas (guest, #52554)
[Link] (5 responses)
Remember, RMS's (and the FSF's) primary motivation is and always has been freedom (in both the short term AND the long term), not features or technology or convenience. If something is convenient now but likely to lead to a loss of software freedom in the future then it should be no surprise that RMS will argue against it....and history has shown that, more often than not, he will be right because he takes a longer view than mere short term convenience.
Posted Feb 18, 2015 20:45 UTC (Wed)
by k8to (guest, #15413)
[Link] (3 responses)
Both bother me, anyway.
Posted Feb 19, 2015 6:59 UTC (Thu)
by cas (guest, #52554)
[Link] (2 responses)
I'm far more concerned about Apple's intentions with LLVM's licensing, and RMS's "intransigence" is, as i mentioned, no surprise - he's been both open and consistent about his goals and motivations for decades. more to the point here, his stance is that software freedom is the end goal, and neither features nor convenience nor technological advantage are sufficient reason to divert from that goal.
IMO he's right - you're better off choosing free software over proprietary software even if the proprietary software is significantly better. and, in the long run, you're better off choosing free software that advances the cause of software freedom over open source software that does nothing for that cause or has licensing issues - and corporate history - that actively work against it.
Posted Feb 21, 2015 20:46 UTC (Sat)
by k8to (guest, #15413)
[Link] (1 responses)
But I don't feel at all convinced that copyleft over noncopyleft infrastructure is necessarily better. noncopyleft is sometimes more readily adopted, which can advance the cause of software freedom. copyleft is more resilient to co-option, which can advance the cause of software freedom.
If it's necessarily better to select copylefted software, then I guess I should write everything in Pike, because all the other languages have open specifications with non-copylefted and/or propriatary implementations or a single noncopylefted implementation.
Posted Mar 1, 2015 2:46 UTC (Sun)
by cas (guest, #52554)
[Link]
that's because freedom is a benefit that transcends software quality. there are many cases where proprietary software is better quality and/or has more features than comparable free software - but free software allows you to do things that you can not legally or practically do with proprietary software.
similarly copyleft software has the advantage over non-copyleft free sw that it actively promotes and enhances the cause of free software for everyone - with the only restriction being that you can't restrict the freedom of others to do whatever they want with the software or derivative works.
Posted Feb 19, 2015 14:08 UTC (Thu)
by dakas (guest, #88146)
[Link]
Posted Feb 17, 2015 13:46 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
he certainly understands that LLVM is a threat to copyleft (as you pointed out, GCC, together with Linux, is probably the most successful copylefted program) and as such to the GNU project's vision of software freedom.
The GNU project and the GPL were a reaction to academics and software company conspiring to make software closed that previously was developed openly and accessible to its users in academia and elsewhere.
The GPL and GNU were the weapon designed to work against making software proprietary, with the vision to regain a world where software was free.
Now LLVM is free, not due to the GPL though arguably due to the example and pressure the GNU project put on the market. So I have a hard time seeing it as a threat to the GNU projects's vision of software freedom. It isn't even much of a threat to copyleft: should Apple or somebody else do a heinous move on the central part of LLVM, it is likely that a workable community could be formed around a GPLed fork of LLVM.
So if someone wanted to seriously thwart LLVM serving a vision of software freedom, the GPL could become part of saving the day.
So in a somewhat amusing way, GNU and the GPL actually make sure that LLVM stays free, and they would even do that if GCC did not factor in the equation at all.
So unless some GPL-incompatible licensing change happens with the bulk of the LLVM community in support of that change, LLVM is not much of a stepping stone towards ending the free software dream. It just is not a weapon against proprietary compiler versions either. Which GCC is.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Wol
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Yet that's what the industry has done. It turns out that there's a benefit in collaboration, so we have permissively licensed LLVM infrastructure, Android, Hadoop and others.
Certainly. And GPLv2 had been grudgingly accepted by companies - Apple used gcc, shipped Samba-based servers, used GNU utilities.
Clang has been here for several years by now. So far there are no signs of proliferation of "value-added" crap.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
So does LLVM.
Swift is likely to be open sourced soon. ARM proprietary compilers are pretty much dead, AMD mainlined their LLVM shader compiler, and NVidia uses a completely proprietary infrastructure (no LLVM) for their internal OpenCL system.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
I've no idea why people still use them. Anyway, do they contain any significant improvements?
CUDA support is _mainlined_ in LLVM: https://github.com/llvm-mirror/llvm/tree/a7f8f932a67badb2...
And so? I expect that a lot of companies are going to produce their "Super Mega Fork Of LLVM, Now With A Big Red Button!". However, they won't contain anything of interest.
Apple has a history with gcc.
> Right now there are basically no such relevant packages anymore.
> That's a glorious victory, methinks.
>> licenses to the ARM compilers, which as of v6 are built on top of LLVM.
>> Which brought many improvements, but it's still just as proprietary as before
>> -- We stop paying, we lose the ability to take advantage of our own work.
> I've no idea why people still use them.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Sometimes that's a valid choice.
> Business models are king! Profit rules!
You nailed it.
Not really, but it does matter the most when I choose what kind of software to use.
Close enough.
Yup.
Certainly. Excuse me, I have to go out and destroy another part of our society. Be back in a second.
What exactly do you want?
2) Forcing your ideology on everyone.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Examples being?...
Not really. GPLv2 was borderline acceptable for many companies, but liberal licenses were still preferable.
There are lots of successful examples here. If a project is interesting for a wide community then it usually survives.
Apple has a history with gcc.
> Why would I use a package that forces me to
> disclose my proprietary code?
> Ok, I'm back. Another social compact is destroyed,
> another community ruined and the world has become
> just a little bit more cruel. A nice day, all in all.
> Why would I use a package that forces me to disclose my proprietary code?
> Even more, it might actually deny me some business models.
> The only answer is: "This package is indispensable". Right now
> there are basically no such relevant packages anymore.
> That's a glorious victory, methinks.
> the world has become just a little bit more cruel.
> A nice day, all in all.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Just to clarify - I'm not forcing you or anyone to adopt BSD or other licenses. Nor do I wish to.
1) Free software projects eventually die if they do not have some kind of revenue stream to support their developers. It's doubly true for large projects that require close collaboration of many developers.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Apple has a history with gcc.
Still, the intransigence is making me more and more inclined towards avoiding Emacs and GCC.
Ah, real Emacs users can't avoid Emacs. We're locked in: the keybindings are wired into our souls. :)