

Eben Moglen: clang/LLVM built solely to undermine freedom - tzs
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100806143457345

======
avar
I usually agree with or sympathize with Moglen's views but this is just
indefensible.

He's saying that Steve Jobs is "a man whose selfishness surpasses any recorded
selfishness", and why? Because he opted to support a modular compiler started
at the University of Illinois instead of the GCC.

The LLVM's license is free, and even classified as such by the FSF. To smear
participants in a fellow free software project like this or those that fund it
is beyond low.

I lost a lot of respect for Moglen after reading that.

~~~
prodigal_erik
NeXT under Jobs refused to meet their GPL obligations for their new ObjC
frontend until they were threatened with legal action. I'm guessing Moglen was
involved in that conflict, and it shaped his attitude about Jobs.

~~~
protomyth
If that makes a person say he is "a man whose selfishness surpasses any
recorded selfishness", then the speaker should either cut down on the
hyperbole or have more dealing in the real world outside software.

------
fierarul
Clang/LLVM is built (and financed) to be _the_ real open-source competitor to
GCC.

I don't see the problem here, not everything has to be GPL. I'm pretty sure
the FreeBSD folks welcome the choice.

GCC is probably the main "monopoly" GNU has, so it must be scary to see that
go away.

~~~
tptacek
If I believed everything Stallman says he believes, I'd probably be afraid
that the obsolescence of the flagship GPL products would over the long term
spell the end of Free Software, and that in the long run a shift towards BSD-
style software would leave us back where we were in the '90s: the best work
from free software developers ends up absorbed into nonfree commercial
software with no reciprocity, and so commercial software pushes free software
back into the periphery.

~~~
protomyth
I am not sure if it would spell the end, but it would reduce their influence.
It is probably the most common GPL program included in non-GNU/Linux systems.

Truthfully, it is really a bad business decision not to send patches back to
the original project. If you can get them adopted, it will save on maintenance
(since everyone is maintaining your patch). It seems that companies that won't
file patches back under BSD/MIT are not doing themselves any favors. Further,
given the decision process at those companies, it is probably better that
those patches don't get added to the mainline.

------
tptacek
This remark appears to be a tiny side-note in a larger "State of Free
Software" keynote talk, and makes Moglen look like a crazy person. I blame the
title of the HN post, not Moglen.

~~~
darkandbrooding
Moglen stated, "but Mr. Jobs is investing heavily in LLVM solely so he can
stop using GCC, lest the patents somehow leak across the GPLv3 barrier, and we
become able to use his claims. Nobody has ever tried before, to build a multi-
platform C compiler solely in order to undermine freedom."

According to wikipedia, the LLVM is licensed using the University of
Illinois/NCSA Open Source License.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Illinois/NCSA_Ope...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Illinois/NCSA_Open_Source_License)

As stated in that entry, "Source code under the NCSA license can be
incorporated into proprietary products without the reciprocity requirements
that copyleft free software licenses raise. The license is compatible with all
versions of the GNU General Public License."

Can someone smarter than me explain how this license undermines freedom? Or
how the LLVM undermines freedom despite this license? I'm having a hard time
connecting the dots.

~~~
lurch_mojoff
Well, it's quite simple really - the license is not GPL and there is no
reciprocity requirement - that alone in the minds of some GNU fanatics,
amongst which obviously Moglen is, is a crime against freedom and all that's
holy.

Maybe I'm getting old, senile and cranky, but thing's didn't use to be this
kooky in the open source movement, did they? I mean, there was always the
political component to it, the strife for influence, the "stick it to the man"
thing, but things didn't use to get this out of hand - smearing another open
source project, simply because it's kicking your ass while having a more
liberal license.

~~~
tptacek
The FSF has always been this political. Open software has gotten _less_
political over the last 15 years.

Moglen doesn't think non-copyleft software is a crime. The evidence suggests
that he thinks non-copyleft software is bad for free software in the long run,
because it has the effect of enhancing non-free software along with free
software.

Anybody can observe that over the long run, if most of the best work in open
software is done without copyleft, copyleft-protected software will suffer;
free software will have one major contributor (people writing free software),
and nonfree software will have two (huge companies _and_ people writing most
of the best work in free software).

It's not complicated. It's a reasonable perspective. Disagree with it all you
want (and I do), but it doesn't deserve to be mocked.

------
st3fan
This is crazy talk. Apple's decision to go with LLVM is simply a practical and
pragmatic one. It is a matter of choosing the right tool for the right job.

They simply needed a better compiler infrastructure to make Xcode and other
tools smarter. You can see some good results of that in Xcode4.

They saw a great opportunity in an open source project (LLVM) and jumped on
it.

~~~
prodigal_erik
> You can see some good results of that in Xcode4.

No, I can't. It's proprietary and probably won't ever be ported to my
platforms. This kind of crap is why I don't contribute to BSDL projects unless
I'm being well paid.

------
RexRollman
I disagree, strongly, with the sentiment of Mr. Moglen. As a user of a BSD, I
can see a few reasons for wanting a non-GPLed compiler. I also suspect that
GNU feels threatened by an open source competitor after being the only real
game in town for so long.

------
tzs
See remarks at 36:50 in the transcript.

