Re: elementary OS

[Rogelio Serrano]

On 11 Feb 2014 11:05, "David Chisnall" <theraven@sucs.org> wrote:
>
> On 10 Feb 2014, at 21:30, Gerold Rupprecht <geroldr@bluewin.ch> wrote:
>
> > The newer syntax in Objective-C require some hacking on GCC, the
> > compiler collection. David Chisnell is very capable, but has been
> > working mostly on Clang. Getting similar features into GCC would be a
> > big plus. David, I would love to hear your thoughts if this would be a
> > fruitful endeavor to broaden the appeal of Etoilé?

Just create useful software. Just keep making them. The more the better. We learn by doing and that includes ui design. I'm worse off today because I spent too much time theorising about perfect code in the past.

>
> GCC support for Objective-C is dead, and GCC support for ARM is likely to languish.  I talk quite regularly to ARM's compiler group.  They have customers in two categories:
>
> - Won't use GCC because of the license (GPLv3 means to a lot of companies 'don't let this code in the door')

I don't really care about current closed source companies.

>
> - Will use whatever compiler ARM recommends
>
> As such, ARM is focussing entirely on LLVM and encouraging their partners to do the same.  The two big mobile operating systems, iOS and Android, are backed by the two companies that employ the majority of LLVM developers.

I'm learning how to engineer compilers precisely because of LLVM. C++ makes me want to pull my hair out by the roots. Slowly.

> The license is, to be honest, also an impediment for GNUstep.  I'm seeing increasingly that commercial entities have two strategies with open source:
>
> - If it's copyleft, fork it and don't tell anyone.  Obfuscate your binaries a little bit and hope no one sues.  This generally works, because most open source projects either don't have the resources to sue, don't care, or don't want to frighten off other companies by being seen as litigious.
>
> - If it's permissively licensed, fork it and upstream anything that doesn't give you a competitive advantage, so that your merge costs are lower (and so other people fix your bugs).

They do it because they can. Until we can gain more power by hook or by crook that will always be the case. A machiavellian approach is needed.

>
> There are two or three companies that I strongly suspect of following the first approach with GNUstep and I think we missed an opportunity with them, as each is independently putting more manpower into their private fork than we are on upstream.
>
> Having the tools under GPLv3 is also a problem, because shipping working programs requires shipping many of the tools (at least defaults and gpbs) and that puts companies off.  It's no accident that most of the biggest users of GNUstep use it for in-house development and not distributing the result.
>
> I find it increasingly difficult to be motivated to work on a project where I most likely can't use the results commercially because it has a license that is not permitted by most of the companies that I work with.  I am not the only one who has this problem: Nicolas (who used to be a very active contributor) is now writing an entirely new GUI toolkit on his employer's time because they don't want copyleft software touching their products.
>

They can afford it why not. If there is no company willing to use gplv3 I'll make one. Gplv3 software is a strategic resource in my opinion.

Most companies find me unemployable so that's not a problem.

> David
>
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