Richard Stallman Calls LLVM A "Terrible Setback"

[jsdyson]

Yes, but in practice, it's contributing back. Why? Because you not only have to give the source to the people you give binaries to, but give them the right to redistribute it, that's how the GPL works, and AFAIK that's how all of copyleft works.. This means it will eventually go public, as someone will end up sharing it. In turn, this leads to the project having the opportunity to merge those changes upstream. Of course, it's up to them, but the same can be said when someone directly tries to contribute: accepting the contribution is up to upstream.

(Sorry if a similar reply is already seen)
If you are a business and purchase 'GPL support' with updated binaries/source, you have NO business motivation to pass the code on to anyone else. If you are a GPL idealist, then you might want to pass the code on. However, both kinds of licenses encourage contribution back to the 'pool' by the advantages of net support. (That is intrinsic support by the net community.)

The biggest difference between the various licensing schemes are idealism versus practicality (you choose which is idealism and which is practicality.)

John Dyson

[jsdyson]

BSD receives less contributions than linux for mostly the same reason than hurd (which is not permissive): it's because linux exists and took of.

I have to admit that Linux partially took off because of a few reasons -- personality cult (to an extent), and also idealism about GPL. The idealism might be related to the probably incorrect idea that GPL forces submissions back to the codebase (which it doesn't.)

SO, GPL might have been a big part of the growth of Linux. Until approx. the early 2000's, FreeBSD actually worked better on the proper hardware. Once the Linux crew mostly fixed some of their subsystems, then it started working better (the terrible clogging or going to sleep that early kernels would do.) One key to the FreeBSD working consistently (early on) was VERY CAREFUL management of the creation/queuing of for dirty page/dirty data writes. (I know, I wrote the code!!!) Long queues and big deferred writes create huge latencies (clogging.)

John Dyson

[jsdyson]

Yes, but in practice, it's contributing back. Why? Because you not only have to give the source to the people you give binaries to, but give them the right to redistribute it, that's how the GPL works, and AFAIK that's how all of copyleft works.. This means it will eventually go public, as someone will end up sharing it. In turn, this leads to the project having the opportunity to merge those changes upstream. Of course, it's up to them, but the same can be said when someone directly tries to contribute: accepting the contribution is up to upstream.

If I am an ongoing business not involved with 'e.g. compiler development', I won't redistribute the source/binary given to me -- no need to. I am just using the compiler. So, there is no redistribution of anything interesting. So, if I 'buy services' from a firm providing GPLed software with mods, then I don't need to redistribute it. They also only need to give source to me (or other direct customers.)

THEREFORE, GPL doesn't really cause/force contributing new stuff back to the net -- BSD and GPL have similar motivations for contributing back to the net -- NET BASED SUPPORT :-).

John Dyson

[mrugiero]

HOWEVER, IN THE COPYLEFT CASE YOU NEED NOT GIVE BACK TO THE PROJECT, BUT JUST TO THOSE WHO YOU GIVE BINARIES!!! Remember: the original GPL is mostly a binary encumbrance (non-pejorative.) It does tie up the source in the sense of needing to offer to those who receive binaries.

John Dyson

Yes, but in practice, it's contributing back. Why? Because you not only have to give the source to the people you give binaries to, but give them the right to redistribute it, that's how the GPL works, and AFAIK that's how all of copyleft works.. This means it will eventually go public, as someone will end up sharing it. In turn, this leads to the project having the opportunity to merge those changes upstream. Of course, it's up to them, but the same can be said when someone directly tries to contribute: accepting the contribution is up to upstream.

[jsdyson]

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...



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...

Using the term 'anarchy' is not really helpful. The opposite of anarchy (like GPL?) is totalitarianism? Perhaps extreme socialism? Let's not use emotional terms -- believe me, I have been through this. LETS JUST ANALYZE THE DIFFERENCES AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER.

John Dyson

[jsdyson]

I'm aware, but making good analogies is easier when you try to defend a particular point, while I was just trying to debunk the idea that freedom and complete lack of restrictions are necessarily the same thing, and my analogy makes that obvious, which is the idea.


I pretty much agree, specially on the part that it's subjective.

HOWEVER, IN THE COPYLEFT CASE YOU NEED NOT GIVE BACK TO THE PROJECT, BUT JUST TO THOSE WHO YOU GIVE BINARIES!!! Remember: the original GPL is mostly a binary encumbrance (non-pejorative.) It does tie up the source in the sense of needing to offer to those who receive binaries.

John Dyson

[erendorn]

The point is, if you had created Linux kernel and all the side libraries and tools, you would have done it under BSD?

Reading comprehension problems? Issue with the English language? Regardless of it being GPL or BSD, it could not have been stolen.

So, irrelevant to what you quoted from me, but relevant to what you answered, here you go...

[profoundWHALE]

The point is, if you had created Linux kernel and all the side libraries and tools, you would have done it under BSD?

The point is, that's not the purpose of linux. What you're looking for is called FreeBSD.

[artivision]

The point is, you cannot steal (what I quoted from you) non-excludable and non-rivalrous goods. Like distributed music. Like open source code.

The point is, if you had created Linux kernel and all the side libraries and tools, you would have done it under BSD?

[erendorn]

I can download music, games, movies. IP is there for a reason. In this case it's against my freedom, but when comes to GPL it protects it, because any change to GPL licensed code will be available to me. BSD can't give me such guarantee.

The point is, you cannot steal (what I quoted from you) non-excludable and non-rivalrous goods. Like distributed music. Like open source code.