Re: LLVM or GCC or Intel?
Re: LLVM or GCC or Intel?
- Subject: Re: LLVM or GCC or Intel?
- From: Jonas Maebe <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 08:29:24 +0100
On 31 Jul 2008, at 23:53, Jens Alfke wrote:
On 31 Jul '08, at 2:25 PM, Jonas Maebe wrote:
It's really is becoming increasingly harder to support Apple
platforms with a third party compiler, because of the evolution to
more and more lockdowns (moving away from open source/free software
to more something like Microsoft's "shared source" concept, which
is nice as long as you only want to look at things, but which
breaks down horribly very soon if you want to do more).
While I agree with you about the larger-scale issues of NDA madness,
it has nothing to do with compiler technology. LLVM is fully open
source, released under the NCSA license <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php
>.
That license explicitly allows Apple to make modifications to the LLVM
they distribute with a future iPhone/iTablet/... SDK and not to open
source those modifications.
There are obviously many points of view on how software should be
distributed; I don't feel that software licenses should be used (as
by the FSF) as political crowbars to attempt to force 3rd parties
into adopting (or not adopting) particular mechanisms. While I think
Apple is overusing the iPhone NDA in an embarrassingly self-
destructive way, I do defend their right to choose how to make their
software available.
Yes, that's what I'm saying: the LLVM license enables the lawyers to
overuse NDAs in even more embarrassingly destructive ways. The GPL at
least holds back some of the madness, regardless of how you may feel
about it in general (but it is actually the whole point of the GPL:
keep the information freely available and reusable by anyone, although
this indeed curtails personal/corporate freedom to do what you want in
a number of situations).
FWIW: I do not hold a grudge against closed source/proprietary
software in principle, nor do I think that all software should be open
source or free software. I'm just talking about the specific case of
providing enough information and legal means for third parties to
produce compilers for Apple platforms (and I know I have no natural
nor legal right to demand this and I don't, but come on...).
Jonas
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Xcode-users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden