Why Google Chrome Switched To The Clang Compiler On Linux

[brad0]

Right. And the right to use everyone else's derivatives is arguably a more valuable or more important freedom, depending upon your goals, than the right to use the code in a proprietary product.

To you it is. To me it is not. To me and a lot of developers even outside of companies the ability to do whatever I want / need to do with the code is considerably more important. This affects more than just the use of code within proprietary products.

[Skrapion]

To you it is. To me it is not. To me and a lot of developers even outside of companies the ability to do whatever I want / need to do with the code is considerably more important. This affects more than just the use of code within proprietary products.

It's not usually for me either. I develop proprietary games, so the ability to use the code in a proprietary product is the most important thing to me, which limits my choices to public domain, BSD, LGPL (if I'm on a platform that can do dynamic linking), or proprietary. That's right: proprietary licenses actually give me more freedom than GPL does, or rather, they give me freedoms that are more important to me. Unreal 4, for instance, has a great license, and the fact that it's proprietary doesn't even stop me from contributing patches.

GPL isn't always a show-stopper, though, especially when it comes to tools. I've contributed to TortoiseSVN and Audacity, which are both GPL, and GPL is a great fit for my use of those products.

You can't simply label licenses as "more free" or "less free", because it depends on which freedoms are more important to your particular use case.

[brad0]

You can't simply label licenses as "more free" or "less free", because it depends on which freedoms are more important to your particular use case.

That is pretty obvious but the GPL zealots seem to have a hard time grasping the obvious.

[dee.]

Nobody pretends to call CC licensed content "free content" (or if they do, same bullshit). It's called CC licensed content.
Similarly, GPL licensed software is not free software, neither as in beer or as in freedom.
"You are free to [do a list of things]" is absolutely not the same as "the code is free [to use]"

By your definition, there's no such thing as free. BSD-licensed code is not "free" either, it also comes with terms you have to comply with in order to use it. The same as GPL, only the terms are different.

And actually, in reality, there's no such thing as "absolute freedom". You define "freedom" in a way that is convenient to you (or your argument) and then use your own definition to argue that GPL is "less free" than some alternative. Sorry, but that's basically just circular reasoning.

[smitty3268]

That is pretty obvious but the GPL zealots seem to have a hard time grasping the obvious.

It's not the GPL zealots who continuously attack another license as not being free enough. That's the BSD zealots.

Can we move on, now? Both licenses are good for what they do. Some people prefer one over the other. Do we really have to rant and rave about it here?

One of the best things about OSS is the online community. The very worst thing about OSS is also the online "community."

[My8th]

Any more info about Clangs usage with chrome instead of talk about licensing?

[brad0]

It's not the GPL zealots who continuously attack another license as not being free enough. That's the BSD zealots.

LOL. You mean like the GPL zealots continually attacking other licenses for not respecting their freedom? Are you that deluded?

[Nth_man]

Your BSD code used by proprietary competitors to prevail against you? No, thanks

"In the beginning, it was also to the advantage of Linux that its license, the Gnu General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) made it possible to share the efforts of many programmers but without letting their work be used against them (closed inside competing proprietary software). That, as I see it, was one of the problems with the BSD Unix family --FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc.-- and its BSD License".

[Michael_S]

LOL. You mean like the GPL zealots continually attacking other licenses for not respecting their freedom? Are you that deluded?

Did any GPL zealots chime in on this thread attacking BSD? I think all of us FSF fans have been posting defenses against attacks on our use of the word 'freedom' in association with the GPL - attacks coming from BSD fans.

If you don't like the GPL, that's fine. Don't use it. There is plenty of awesome, technically brilliant BSD-style-license and even proprietary software out there. Just don't claim that copyleft cannot be associated with the words 'free' and 'freedom', don't claim that copyleft is fundamentally communist, don't claim that all copyleft software is inferior to all BSD-style-license software, and don't claim that copyleft fans are attacking BSD licenses when we're just advancing arguments in our own defense.

It's not usually for me either. I develop proprietary games, so the ability to use the code in a proprietary product is the most important thing to me, which limits my choices to public domain, BSD, LGPL (if I'm on a platform that can do dynamic linking), or proprietary. That's right: proprietary licenses actually give me more freedom than GPL does, or rather, they give me freedoms that are more important to me. Unreal 4, for instance, has a great license, and the fact that it's proprietary doesn't even stop me from contributing patches.

GPL isn't always a show-stopper, though, especially when it comes to tools. I've contributed to TortoiseSVN and Audacity, which are both GPL, and GPL is a great fit for my use of those products.

You can't simply label licenses as "more free" or "less free", because it depends on which freedoms are more important to your particular use case.

There's the world I want to live in, and then the one that actually exists. I understand and respect your choices, and would do the same in your shoes. I would prefer to work full time on GPL software if I could, but right now I keep family provided for by working on proprietary software.

[brad0]

Did any GPL zealots chime in on this thread attacking BSD? I think all of us FSF fans have been posting defenses against attacks on our use of the word 'freedom' in association with the GPL - attacks coming from BSD fans.

I'm not going to read the whole thread but it is common for many other threads on Phoronix. It is what this site is known for.

If you don't like the GPL, that's fine. Don't use it. There is plenty of awesome, technically brilliant BSD-style-license and even proprietary software out there. Just don't claim that copyleft cannot be associated with the words 'free' and 'freedom', don't claim that copyleft is fundamentally communist, don't claim that all copyleft software is inferior to all BSD-style-license software, and don't claim that copyleft fans are attacking BSD licenses when we're just advancing arguments in our own defense.

You're putting words in my mouth and sounding crazy as hell.