Richard Stallman Calls LLVM A "Terrible Setback"

[profoundWHALE]

[shitposting intensifies]

BSD: Free, but doesn't require derivatives to be Free
GPL: Free, but requires derivatives to be Free

HMM I WONDER WHICH IS ACTUALLY MORE FREE
YEP DEFINITELY THE ONE THAT PERMITS ARBITRARY REMOVAL OF FREEDOM DOWN THE LINE

HURRR

In This Thread: Paid BSD-license shills desparate to bait-and-switch humanity out of software Freedom and back into an all-proprietary dystopia

"YEP DEFINITELY THE ONE THAT PERMITS ARBITRARY REMOVAL OF FREEDOM DOWN THE LINE"
"DEFINITELY THE ONE THAT PERMITS ARBITRARY REMOVAL"
"THE ONE THAT PERMITS"
"PERMITS"


Yup

You proved my point, thank you.

[Luke_Wolf]

Well Now... I think this is a new low for the phoronix forums... we actually have purely troll accounts trolling troll acounts

[mahalin]

Can we all agree that BSD offers more 'freedom' while GPL offers more 'free software'?
BSD allows people the freedom to build off of an existing piece of software and then sell it, yes. This means that any modifications don't have to be shared which is nice for people trying to make a living.
GPL allows people the freedom of always being able to see and fork the crap out of the source code. This means that any modifications to the source code is public to everyone and the improvements can be shared.

Defining freedom is tricky as witnessed on these forums. In our world with limited resources, perfect/ideal/absolute freedom (supposedly the essence of BSD), I would define as everyone or anyone being be able to have everything or anything they could possibly want or need anytime.

• Initially, anarchy didn't work so great such as individuals fighting with individuals over food and women. The individual found working together resulted in each individual getting what he/she wanted, but of course we're so selfish we didn't mind the fact the other party benefited as well as long as our expectations were exceeded and the odds in our favor.
• As a result, we learned how to cooperate and formed families, tribes, villages, towns, cities, states, nations, etc. The conventional model with a single individual weilding all the power (think primal father), such as monarchies, didn't scale very well.
• So we attempted to divide the power up among the individuals. Democracy is the best we've come up with so far and TBH I rather live in this present than any other time in the past.

So I think the highest possible form of absolute freedom (as I defined earlier) that should at least be able to attain is some form of democracy. We'll see what the future holds...

Unfortunately there are downsides to both.
BSD's freedom includes the freedom to be a butthead and essentially take another person's work and effort and turn it into their own personal gain.
GPL's lack of the previous freedom means that many companies will not back a project, because they don't like putting their money into something that their competitor could use too.

I think it's quite the opposite. Why do so many companies contribute to the Linux Kernel yet AFAIK few companies contribute back to BSD such as Apple. Not to mention, recently, BSD has had some trouble paying its bills. When you think about it, if Apple had contributed back to BSD and assuming it significantly improved BSD to the point of being highly competitive with the Linux Kernel, Google could have used BSD instead of the Linux Kernel for Android, thus empowering its competitors.

Company A likes to contribute to certain GPL projects because they know Company B can't take Company A's contribution and close source it to the detriment of Company A. The GPL provides a form of freedom whereas BSD provides another form of freedom.

Which provides more freedom, depends on the viewpoint taken (also assuming user is always acting in self-interest):

• From the user (including corporate) perspective, you could say the GPL takes freedom away from users/companies since they don't have the right to use the code however they want and BSD ensures freedom since users/companies can virtually do what they want with it. However, I do not think you can say companies exploit code, since those who make their code BSD implicitly permit "exploitation" as commonly defined albeit not verbatim. If you say companies exploit BSD licenses, then you're applying the GPL mindset to the BSD model which is illogical i.e. applying the user's desires to the developer's desires.
• From the developer perspective, you could say the GPL takes freedom away from the user if the user wants their code to have absolutely no restrictions, and you could say the BSD ensures freedom for the user since it allows anyone to do virtually anything they want with the code.
• To be technical, any code with a license (GPL/BSD/EULA) is never free as previously defined. True freedom would allow whomever to do whatever they want with it including license or no license - public domain. True freedom would be nothing - no requirement to make open-source, no requirement to include the text block in the header, etc. Heck, deny you created it and say the code generated itself.

I think BSD benefits both proprietary and GPL codebases since BSD can be incorporated into both so to me BSD is neutral, or even possibly detrimental. Actually, I think the whole competitive process could be sped up if someone chose proprietary or GPL instead of BSD lol.

I always thought of BSD as the anarchist and GPL as the libertarian. However, I don't think the GPL can be properly compared to the popular definition of communism because digital information could be considered non-rivalrous. And that makes all the difference right?

IMHO, communism doesn't work in the real world since resources are rivalrous. The person allocating the resources will always be biased and have an advantage over the masses since everyone cannot literally assert their property rights over the said resources simultaneously. However, this should be possible in a non-rivalrous world, like the digital world. I also think of the GPL as an ongoing experiment lol.

The existence of LLVM is a good thing regardless of the license as long as competitors can exist like the GCC. The results will inevitably play itself out. If open-source in the form of the GPL is more efficient and innovative, in the long run it should become the victor over proprietary solutions. Although, the Linux Kernel could be a predictor of things to come...

[profoundWHALE]

Well Now... I think this is a new low for the phoronix forums... we actually have purely troll accounts trolling troll acounts

Am I one of the troll accounts trolling the troll accounts? Because I'm not sure if I should be proud, or ashamed.

[Luke_Wolf]

Am I one of the troll accounts trolling the troll accounts? Because I'm not sure if I should be proud, or ashamed.

no, I was referring to Truth and the latest iteration of BSDSUCKSDICKS..

[profoundWHALE]

Well to be fair, every site has their few trolls who go at it in the never-ending sparring match on the interwebs. I usually do learn some from them. Like if it weren't for the canonical trolls, I wouldn't have known about that licensing thingy majigger.

[nightmarex]

That's exactly what our ancestors fought - communism and socialism, this is deeply anti-American, anti capitalist and anti free market, it has a "sharing" agenda and forces you to do so. Given that Stallman regularly visits China to give speeches I think he secretly works for the Chinese government.

Comically the communism in China works a lot like capitalism here. Those with power reap the rewards and those without sow the effort. Not to mention with the NSA calling the shots these days don't you feel it's a little like China already?

[profoundWHALE]

Comically the communism in China works a lot like capitalism here. Those with power reap the rewards and those without sow the effort. Not to mention with the NSA calling the shots these days don't you feel it's a little like China already?

Communism and Captitalism are not opposites, Captitalism and Socialism are opposites.

True communist Russia had no centralized government, and therefore, no centralized... direction. So a lot of very large projects would be difficult to build or even start.

But even your capitalist America has socialism in it.

-------

The point people usually seem to miss is it's not which is right, it's how each of them are put into practice.

-------

[Luke_Wolf]

Well to be fair, every site has their few trolls who go at it in the never-ending sparring match on the interwebs. I usually do learn some from them. Like if it weren't for the canonical trolls, I wouldn't have known about that licensing thingy majigger.

There's a difference between Ideologues, fanboys, and Troll accounts. The former two you can learn something from, and the first you can learn more from than the second due to the first's basis in some amount of evidence as opposed to the fanboy who just has baseless fanaticism for. The last though is useless for learning from because they don't actually argue they just troll... Can you seriously say you've learned anything from Truth's antics? I certainly haven't.

[dfx.]

freedom protection is important

The way RMS speaks you'd think that writing closed-source code was a crime against humanity. The fact is that GPLv3 makes things VERY awkward for companies to work with and other licenses like BSD are usually more suitable for different scenarios. What LLVM does is provide an alternative choice - if GCC suits you better, go for it, else you can pick LLVM. Everyone wins!

it is, especially in case of governmental purchases made on taxpayers' money.
so much resources already wasted on disadvantageous vendor-lock contract clauses and painful ass-backwards adaptation of proprietary software to actual, real-world needs of a buyer (like, sometimes you have to plan your entire infrastructure around proprietary system's deficiencies, instead of being able to fix them and do thing properly). and worse, when you buying expensive "air" from foreign seller's, money don't even land in your own economy.
Free software work is beneficial to all humanity and has 0 adaptation barriers. It's absolutely ignorant in place of a customer to prefer proprietary software, or worse, vendor-locked "sandwich" of a "hw/sw complex" device, over free software. even open software over free software, for it's "open" only to be a bait for dirty commercialisation purposes, like tivoization.

you may argue beautiful ideological concepts all you like, buy proprietary and open software are just too wasteful.