PlayStation 4 System Compiler Support Landing In LLVM

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PlayStation 4 System Compiler Support Landing In LLVM

Support for Sony's PlayStation 4 game console code generation is landing within LLVM's open-source compiler infrastructure...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PlayStation-4-LLVM-Landing

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Remember now, only GPLv3 designed software gets companies to commit their changes to shared code, back to the mainline. /s

[AnonymousCoward]

Wait, doesn't PS4 use FreeBSD?

[pasaulais]

Remember now, only GPLv3 designed software gets companies to commit their changes to shared code, back to the mainline. /s

To be fair, would they still mainline the code if the LLVM codebase wasn't changing so much between releases?

[duby229]

Wait, doesn't PS4 use FreeBSD?

Yeah, but the build platform is based on LLVM, which afaik requires them to mainline any changes they make.

[Luke_Wolf]

Yeah, but the build platform is based on LLVM, which afaik requires them to mainline any changes they make.

Nope, the LLVM license says absolutely nothing of the sort, and was kinda the whole point of why stallman was shitting his pants over it about a year ago.

[Luke_Wolf]

To be fair, would they still mainline the code if the LLVM codebase wasn't changing so much between releases?

That's most of the real reason any company actually contributes to open source projects where it's not an Open Source Support company. When you hold onto changes you're effectively creating a fork and you're having to maintain that fork. It is much simpler and easier (and thus costs the least money) to just work upstream as much as you can.

[kalrish]

Remember now, only GPLv3 designed software gets companies to commit their changes to shared code, back to the mainline. /s

We do know those cases in which code has been committed, but we do not know about all the other cases.

To be fair, would they still mainline the code if the LLVM codebase wasn't changing so much between releases?

I agree with you (and with Luke_Wolf). The same happens with the Linux kernel.

[duby229]

Nope, the LLVM license says absolutely nothing of the sort, and was kinda the whole point of why stallman was shitting his pants over it about a year ago.

Well, that's a good thing then. They didn't have to, but they did. If every company had ethics like that we'd all be better off.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Nope, the LLVM license says absolutely nothing of the sort, and was kinda the whole point of why stallman was shitting his pants over it about a year ago.

LLVM is over 10 years old, and yet Stallman shit the bed one year ago. Perhaps he shit the bed due to the fact he's seeing the GPL being used less and not more?