Re: Steven P. Jobs 1955-2011: Here's to the crazy one who inspired us all...

[Lucas Holt]

On Oct 9, 2011, at 3:43 PM, Andrew Pinski wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 6:52 AM, Ivan Vučica <ivucica@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I would reflect upon the positive contributions: Apple's contributions to
>> GCC, contributions to LLVM and Clang, expansion of LGPLed KHTML into WebKit.
> 
> Considering the way LLVM and clang came about.  I think the FSF is
> still correct on how it is handling Steve Jobs passing.  Apple is very
> against GPLv3 and now against GCC because of it.  They are against the
> freedom of the end user of their products.
> 

LLVM has been great for the GCC community.  It forced them to get competitive.  
The whole open source community benefits from faster compilers and choice.   

From another perspective, the FSF forced the LLVM move because of the change in 
license.  I'm indifferent, but I find that many of my users are strongly 
opposed to the GPLv3.  I'm not trying to start a debate on the pros and cons of 
the license, just to point out that end users are part of the reason for this.  
You may consider these people confused, but it's the reason only one BSD 
project has shipped a GPLv3 version of GCC in the base system (DragonFly) and 
the rest are trying to find alternatives whether it be LLVM or pcc.  

This point is also why RMS had to make the comments he did about Steve Jobs to 
begin with.  I agree with others that the timing was poor, but the point is 
valid.  Windows 8's new secure boot environment is a great example of why 
there's a FSF.  

The definition of end user is import here too.  A compiler is used by 
developers and hobbyists.  It has a much different user base than an operating 
system or music player.  I don't think anyone would convince a non computer 
geek that something is better under one license or another without a simple, 
concrete example. 


Lucas Holt
Luke@FoolishGames.com
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