Clang, Chromium, ZFS Improve On FreeBSD

[bridgman]

That being said, I noticed the clang website still lies about GCC.

"GCC is licensed under the GPL license. clang uses a BSD license, which allows it to be used by projects that do not themselves want to be GPL."

I think the statement refers to projects which integrate the compiler as part of the project itself (eg some of the Gallium3D graphics drivers include llvm, and IIRC clover uses Clang and llvm), not projects which are merely compiled with gcc or Clang/llvm.

[DaemonFC]

First off, this thread is over a year and a half old.

That being said, I noticed the clang website still lies about GCC.

"GCC is licensed under the GPL license. clang uses a BSD license, which allows it to be used by projects that do not themselves want to be GPL."

Compiling something with GCC does not mean that what you compile has to be licensed under the GPL. Only derivative works of GCC itself would have to be licensed under the GPL, a compiled project is not a derived work.

Compiling something against GNU libc does not mean that what you compile has to be licensed under the GPL. GNU libc is licensed under the LGPL, which does not require software linking to it to be under the same license.

Opera is compiled using GCC and is linked to GNU libc. This is perfectly OK, they aren't violating any licenses in doing so.


Since clang is basically Apple and BSD stuff, it makes sense that their religious hatred of the GPL would factor into this, but outright lies are just offensive. It would be more honest to say "We hate the GPL because it doesn't let us steal and not give back. GCC is licensed under the GPL. We must NIH our own compiler. EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!!!!"



GPL MUST BE EXTERMINATED!!! BSD OPERATING SYSTEMS ARE SUPERIOR BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO CONCEPT OF ELEGANCE!!! USE YOUR SOUND AND VIDEO CARD LIKE IT IS 1999!!! OBEY!!! OBEY!!!

[Shining Arcanine]

As I said, there is no reason, besides the license, to switch the system's compiler to LLVM. If you want to write a compiler/virtual machine/whatever yourself, then LLVM is what you should use, but, as a system compiler, switching to it (besides the license difference) is pointless.

And no, its not the same - ICC is not free software


What's wrong with the BSD license? Nothing, really, except it allows everyone to plagiarize your work without giving anything back. Cedega, remember how it got created? That made WINE change its license to LGPL. I'm a developer myself, and if I release something as open/free software I don't want any proprietary company to steal my work, and GPL helps me with that. The only thing it restricts is the theft of my work.


'Contibutors'? I think you've used the wrong word. Linux has way more contributors than BSD ever had. (You read Phoronix, right? So you should know that BSD is lagging behind Linux in many aspects.)

I hadn't seen this when it was posted, but I would like to say that it is really hypocritical to open source your code and then talk about people stealing it when you don't like what they do with it. If everyone felt the same as you, no one would have ever "stolen" the BSD TCP/IP stack and the internet would not exist as it does today.

By the way, the latest reports on the LLVM/Clang effort in FreeBSD indicate that most people can use it to compile world without a problem.

I'm the guy behind that subscription model for Chromium on FreeBSD: please try reading the actual report, rather than responding to a brief summary. The patches are continually made available to Chromium devs and the report even links to a useful subscriber-funded fix that was already pushed back upstream and committed. Duplicated effort? You think they would support BSD at all if not for the work us BSD enthusiasts have put in? As for why the patches are kept closed, that should be clear: it's to raise money for development. I tried donations before and all of 4 people donated. If open source had to rely only on donations of time and money, it wouldn't run a toaster, let alone all the things it does today.

Have you tried opening a bug report asking the chromium developers to support FreeBSD?

[yotambien]

This is similar to what the Xming project does. There is a public version available for everybody. It works and it's cool (much better than fiddling with Cygwin/X), but it doesn't have the latest developments. To get the newest version you have to donate at least ?10 and you get access to the newer versions, which include the latest and greatest (upcoming Gallium3D, better support for W7/Vista, 3D acceleration, whatever).

[Sprewell]

Why are they keeping the Chromium patches to themselves for a year? Would that not render them useless when they are finally open sourced because the Chromium project is moving so quickly and waste the Chrmoium project's developer resources because of the duplicated effort?

I'm the guy behind that subscription model for Chromium on FreeBSD: please try reading the actual report, rather than responding to a brief summary. The patches are continually made available to Chromium devs and the report even links to a useful subscriber-funded fix that was already pushed back upstream and committed. Duplicated effort? You think they would support BSD at all if not for the work us BSD enthusiasts have put in? As for why the patches are kept closed, that should be clear: it's to raise money for development. I tried donations before and all of 4 people donated. If open source had to rely only on donations of time and money, it wouldn't run a toaster, let alone all the things it does today.

[kiputnik]

The reason is that llvm will be a better compiler it is allready faster and better designd then gcc and its c performance is getting close to gcc (c++ is still in alpha stage) as to replacing gcc it wont llcm and clang are targeted at c, c++ and obj-c only unlike gcc which supports a bunch of other languages.

Right now it is not better (in terms of generated object code's quality), in the future - maybe. But, right now it is not, so again, there is no real reason to switch to it.

its gpl'ed is free so its not possible to steal any more than its possible to steal bsd licensed software.

ps. it is free http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...e-development/

I really would like to abuse you verbally, since you have absolutely no idea about what you are talking about, nevertheless I'll refrain. You might want to look up what the term 'free software' actually means.

[smitty3268]

ps. it is free http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...e-development/

It's only free for completely non-commercial use. Thanks for that, by the way, i didn't realize that was true. But really there aren't any big distros that i know of which don't have some sort of commercial side to them, except for the really minor ones. And those probably don't have the manpower to get every single one of their packages compiling in a different compiler, especially when there are so many other things they could be focusing on instead. Even Michael couldn't use it in his Phoronix reviews, because he makes money off the website.

[rwhite]

As I said, there is no reason, besides the license, to switch the system's compiler to LLVM. If you want to write a compiler/virtual machine/whatever yourself, then LLVM is what you should use, but, as a system compiler, switching to it (besides the license difference) is pointless.

The reason is that llvm will be a better compiler it is allready faster and better designd then gcc and its c performance is getting close to gcc (c++ is still in alpha stage) as to replacing gcc it wont llcm and clang are targeted at c, c++ and obj-c only unlike gcc which supports a bunch of other languages.

What's wrong with the BSD license? Nothing, really, except it allows everyone to plagiarize your work without giving anything back. Cedega, remember how it got created? That made WINE change its license to LGPL. I'm a developer myself, and if I release something as open/free software I don't want any proprietary company to steal my work, and GPL helps me with that. The only thing it restricts is the theft of my work.

many would argue thats what is right with the bsd license. The people that use it dont care who uses there software and dont mind if they dont give anything back because in most cases people would choose the free software which the software you buy is based off of. And theft of your work? its gpl'ed is free so its not possible to steal any more than its possible to steal bsd licensed software.

And no, its not the same - ICC is not free software

ps. it is free http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...e-development/

[kiputnik]

check http://clang.llvm.org/comparison.html
as to the license why dosent linux use the icc its faster and produces better binaries. Its the same for bsd and gcc

As I said, there is no reason, besides the license, to switch the system's compiler to LLVM. If you want to write a compiler/virtual machine/whatever yourself, then LLVM is what you should use, but, as a system compiler, switching to it (besides the license difference) is pointless.

And no, its not the same - ICC is not free software

They don't like gpl3 - that's why FreeBSD still uses gpl2 gcc and I think the main reason they are working on clang/llvm. FreeBSD likes the BSD licence - what's wrong with not using a restrictive licence like GPL3?

What's wrong with the BSD license? Nothing, really, except it allows everyone to plagiarize your work without giving anything back. Cedega, remember how it got created? That made WINE change its license to LGPL. I'm a developer myself, and if I release something as open/free software I don't want any proprietary company to steal my work, and GPL helps me with that. The only thing it restricts is the theft of my work.

Many commercial contributors find BSD much more attractive than Linux for this reason.

'Contibutors'? I think you've used the wrong word. Linux has way more contributors than BSD ever had. (You read Phoronix, right? So you should know that BSD is lagging behind Linux in many aspects.)

[UncleBensSauce]

Well, they are wasting their efforts in switching to LLVM/Clang in the first place. GCC is a great, mature and very well supported piece of software, there is, as of now, virtually no reason to switch. (Unless you don't like the license, which is just stupid.)

They don't like gpl3 - that's why FreeBSD still uses gpl2 gcc and I think the main reason they are working on clang/llvm. FreeBSD likes the BSD licence - what's wrong with not using a restrictive licence like GPL3? Many commercial contributors find BSD much more attractive than Linux for this reason.


Anyway I think users are able to install whatever they like from Ports, and GPL3 GCC is available in there if you want to use it.