

Stallman: GPL ramifications and purpose - alrs
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/browse_thread/thread/fe9059768fdb5cf7/33eb7760a5c1d9c4

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bsiemon
This headline grossly misstates the content of the post. Apple wanted a closed
source front end that could be linked with the open source gcc
internal/backend. At no point would the existing GCC code ever become
proprietary under this flawed scheme.

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simcop2387
This wasn't Apple at this time. This was after Jobs had been ousted and had
gone with NeXT.

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ra
Also note that RMS wrote this in 1993

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RexRollman
Although I do not care for everything Stallman says and does, I do appreciate
his consistency.

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zitterbewegung
And eventually Apple starts supporting LLVM and the rest is history. Less and
less of GCC is being used by Apple these days.

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schrototo
And of course, LLVM is free and open source as well... just without the GPL.

~~~
rat
And with proprietary frontends(like flash)

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smoyer
I'm just not wasting time reading anything RMS has written ... Thanks for the
memories but:

\- You've jumped the shark.

\- You're no longer relevant.

\- You've alienated so many of your fans.

\- You've pushed zealotry to a new level.

\- You've turned a conversation into a continuous rant.

And the sad part is that I suspect you'll never look back on what you did
accomplish and feel satisfaction. You'll just continue raging against the
goals you couldn't reach.

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Joeboy
Registration required. Could somebody paste or summarize the link? Thanks.

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cpach
It's the second message in this document: [http://www.anonymous-
insider.net/free-software/research/1993...](http://www.anonymous-
insider.net/free-software/research/1993/0704.html)

The first message also gives a little more context.

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jey
Why didn't Apple just have their front-end emit GNU C with #line directives?

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simcop2387
It would have probably been far more annoying to compile to something like
that. I've not programmed in Objective C but I believe that it was designed to
avoid some of the issues that arose out of C++ being originally a preprocessor
like that on top of C. Given that they wanted to do that, having to compile to
some kind of IR, then to C, they would have likely had a much harder time
getting the code optimized in any reasonable manner. I would also imagine that
this would make debugging any part of the compiler that ended up producing
incorrect code far more difficult to do.

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benatkin
Based on the domain next to the headline, I thought Stallman was posting to
Google Plus for a minute. Heh.

(I was surprised to see Douglas Crockford posting there.)

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SeoxyS
Keep in mind, Stallman is the douche who wrote this:

 _Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to
sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley,
"I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to
die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than
theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's
computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope
his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less
effective._

I think he's lost the right to offer opinions about Steve or Apple.

~~~
scq
Stallman wrote this in 1993.

