Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 13, 2015 8:42 UTC (Fri) by salimma (subscriber, #34460)
In reply to: Apple has a history with gcc. by ejr
Parent article: Emacs and LLDB

And the Swift front-end is still entirely closed-source too, of course. Still, the intransigence is making me more and more inclined towards avoiding Emacs and GCC.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 13, 2015 14:34 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

There's an effort to get a Swift compiler for targeting multiple platforms. Also proprietary though. There is probably some project to make an open frontend somewhere though.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 15, 2015 2:23 UTC (Sun) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (5 responses)

huh, that's a weird reaction. Apple's intransigence about their closed source frontend makes me more and more convinced that RMS is right to be concerned about LLVM and its effect on GCC and emacs.

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.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 18, 2015 20:45 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (3 responses)

Obviously, she or he means the intransigence around allowing emacs to use lldb. But perhaps you knew that and were seizing the ambiguity?

Both bother me, anyway.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 19, 2015 6:59 UTC (Thu) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (2 responses)

no ambiguity intended or exploited. I (thought i) was pointing out that there's intransigence on both sides, not just RMS.

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.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 21, 2015 20:46 UTC (Sat) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not at all sold on free software as always better as a universal truth. It's not hard for me to poke holes in this theory, like pointing to some entertainment software. However it seems pretty obviously beneficial for infrastructure like debuggers.

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.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Mar 1, 2015 2:46 UTC (Sun) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link]

I didn't say that free software is always better, i said you're better off choosing free software over proprietary software.

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.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 19, 2015 14:08 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]

Oh, Apple is the devil. But shooting yourself in the other foot is not going to help.

Apple has a history with gcc.

Posted Feb 17, 2015 13:46 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

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. :)