C++11 & The Long-Term Viability Of GCC Is Questioned

[pingufunkybeat]

I think you don't really follow Linus Torvalds, he has always been critical of the FSF and RMS.

Nah, I think it's you who's not really following it.

Linus has had the occasional disagreement with RMS (Linux is much more practical-minded), but he's pretty much in line with the basic ideas behind the FSF.

He's being turned into some kind of anti-FSF apostle by RMS haters, but nothing could be further from the truth.

[kraftman]

GPL use is decreasing, Apache, MIT, and BSD are increasing. http://osrc.blackducksoftware.com/data/licenses/

Don't you see GPL owns OS licenses and bsd remains meaningless?

[koffie]

Arguing which license is more used is like arguing which jeans color is better.
Black jeans are not better than blue jeans, people prefer black jeans because they find it more fitting for their use case (lifestyle), not because they are better.

And building an OS using BSD license is good for student projects, they will close it down anyway - who cares?



Linus was never critical of FSF or RMS, but he is critical when it comes to relicensing the whole kernel, because he himself made a mistake to license it under GPL2 only.

How, he has to track down every single contributor and ask them if its ok to change license, which is really hard job and in his viewpoint its not not worthy for just adding "anti-tivioization".

But GPL3 is much more, hence Linux is licensed GPL2, LGPL2+, GPL3 + many more open licenses now, while Linus himself signs just as "(c) Linus Torvalds".

Linus not critical on RMS/FSF? That's new. He always had strong opinions, I suggest take a look at for example read the first paragraph of this on his personal blog or this, or any of the rants against the FSF attempts to name it "GNU/Linux". I suggest you read the linux mailing list from time to time, or follow him on google+ (although that has been more about diving lately).

Also, "linux", as in "the kernel" - which is still the only thing what "linux" is, is GPLv2 ONLY. No GPLv3, no LGPL. Straight copy/paste from the "COPYING" file from the linux source code:

   NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
 services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
 of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
 Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software
 Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux
 kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.

 Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel
 is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
 v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.

			Linus Torvalds

----------------------------------------

		    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
		       Version 2, June 1991
...

That's pretty damn clear to me.

And just to be clear. I love GPLv2, but I will never release any code under GPLv3. It is too much of a burden on me, a developer. I don't want to be involved in idealistic intellectual wars, and GPLv3 forces this upon me without any additional benefits to me.

[D0pamine]

I love fanboi-ism and hateboi-ism

can i reliably use clang/llvm on a standard gentoo setup right now? no?

if and when this is possible i've no doubt i'll use it or at least suck it and see - until then i'll use gcc which does a fantastic job

so all this RMS and FSF hateboi-ism is just pointless forum war fodder for people with little to do after emptying their prostate

[alex_]

Nah, I think it's you who's not really following it.

Linus has had the occasional disagreement with RMS (Linux is much more practical-minded), but he's pretty much in line with the basic ideas behind the FSF.

He's being turned into some kind of anti-FSF apostle by RMS haters, but nothing could be further from the truth.

really?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-sourc...the-gplv3/1200

[D0pamine]

really?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-sourc...the-gplv3/1200

A: Linus made a kernel
B: stallman and the fsf made pretty much everything else
C: people insist on calling it 'linux' when the system as a whole should be referred to as gnu/linux
D: they did all this for YOU so YOU could use YOUR system as YOU see fit - stallman and torvalds so thank them BOTH!

if bitching between developers is causing you distress then perhaps you should open a bug report

[brosis]

Linus not critical on RMS/FSF? That's new. He always had strong opinions, I suggest take a look at for example read the first paragraph of this on his personal blog or this, or any of the rants against the FSF attempts to name it "GNU/Linux". I suggest you read the linux mailing list from time to time, or follow him on google+ (although that has been more about diving lately).

No, he is not. The naming was resolved as "Linux" for kernel and "GNU/Linux", "Linux" or "$name" when it comes to distribution.
It were also not "attempts", because without GNU userland Linus would NEVER be able to write Linux, and GPL license is also something to reckon; as such personally if find it fair to call the Linux kernel+GNU userland system as "GNU/Linux", and, for example Linux kernel + BSD userland system as "BSD/Linux". If you disagree, keep it as personal opinion too please, because "naming" anything is highly personal thing. And frankly, the "dispute" is garbage in itself.

Also, "linux", as in "the kernel" - which is still the only thing what "linux" is, is GPLv2 ONLY. No GPLv3, no LGPL. Straight copy/paste from the "COPYING" file from the linux source code:

   NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
 services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
 of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
 Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software
 Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux
 kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.

 Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel
 is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
 v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.

			Linus Torvalds

----------------------------------------

		    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
		       Version 2, June 1991
...

That's pretty damn clear to me.

And just to be clear. I love GPLv2, but I will never release any code under GPLv3. It is too much of a burden on me, a developer. I don't want to be involved in idealistic intellectual wars, and GPLv3 forces this upon me without any additional benefits to me.

Wrong, this is the relevant piece:

lso note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel
is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.

And it is "explicitly stated otherwise" many times in headers of different files - the licenses range from BSD to GPL3.
The paragraph above only specifies the "default" license, if none mentioned.

For example, a lazy search of GPL3: /tools/testing/selftests/mqueue/mq_perf_tests.c

mq_perf_tests is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, version 3.

[gamerk2]

And just to be clear. I love GPLv2, but I will never release any code under GPLv3. It is too much of a burden on me, a developer. I don't want to be involved in idealistic intellectual wars, and GPLv3 forces this upon me without any additional benefits to me.

Co-signed. I will never release any of my work under GPLv3 for much the same reasons as you.

[alex_]

A: Linus made a kernel
B: stallman and the fsf made pretty much everything else
C: people insist on calling it 'linux' when the system as a whole should be referred to as gnu/linux
D: they did all this for YOU so YOU could use YOUR system as YOU see fit - stallman and torvalds so thank them BOTH!

if bitching between developers is causing you distress then perhaps you should open a bug report

i wanted to point out that linus does not like gplv3, i agree with you about everything else.

[koffie]

A: Linus made a kernel
B: stallman and the fsf made pretty much everything else
C: people insist on calling it 'linux' when the system as a whole should be referred to as gnu/linux
D: they did all this for YOU so YOU could use YOUR system as YOU see fit - stallman and torvalds so thank them BOTH!

if bitching between developers is causing you distress then perhaps you should open a bug report

While the GNU toolkit certainly bootstrapped Linux, without Linux, GNU would not be where it was right now. Hurd failed to gain any traction, and that project was started a few years before Linux was released. The GNU/FSF's achievements mostly are GCC/GDB, glibc, coreutils and bash, oh and Gnome if you use it. Yes these are important things, but without the linux kernel, they would never have gotten the attention they got in the past 20 years. People suddenly had an OS on which they could actually use the GNU tools, instead of shoehorning it onto other OS'es, so they had to be improved.

I don't know about you, but my first linux distro was a slackware 3.0 on cdrom, which took ages to install on my 66mhz 486 with a whopping 12mb RAM and a 1x mitsumi cdrom. I can guarantee you, the difference between the mentioned building blocks at that time and now is night and day. Back in those days, politics didn't matter that much, everything was a hobby project anyway and 'open source' was simply that, 'open source' and the license was relatively simple to understand. The internet also only just started to be available to a broader public, allowing for an 'easier' way to accept patches from a broader public. It was one big happy family, until linux caught the attention of more mainstream commercial entities, which started using it in various way. Some contributed back, some didn't.

I've been around for quite a while now, and I don't believe for a second the "GNU toolkit" would have had the success or contributers it has had over the years if Linux wouldn't have popped up. It was the platforme that enabled the FSF to shine. So while the GNU/FSF movement does deserve credit for creating GPLv2 and GCC, they seem think they did it all on their own. In reality, they didn't. Oh and just read GPLv3, and try to understand what the hell you can, can't, should and shouldn't do. Good luck!

Lately, politics and angst have taken over the FSF and actually writing code has become a second-class citizen, or do you think it's coincidence they don't attract new developers for their projects? Just look at the sorry state of the "other" FSF projects.

...
And it is "explicitly stated otherwise" many times in headers of different files - the licenses range from BSD to GPL3.
The paragraph above only specifies the "default" license, if none mentioned.

For example, a lazy search of GPL3: /tools/testing/selftests/mqueue/mq_perf_tests.c

The kernel itself does not contain any GPLv3 code, only the "scripts", directory, containing just that, scripts to aid with development, some generating code, and the directory "tools/testing" - which does exactly that, standalone tools for testing kernel features. These are standalone tools, not integrated into the kernel. The kernel itself? GPLv2. The header clearly states "but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.". This does not include the tools provided with it, which come with their own licenses.

Also, some other licenses can be used in GPLv2 code, if they allow re-licensing, since all code in a GPLv2 program has to fall under the same license. GPLv3 however dictates the same, and is incompatible with GPLv2. RMS said it himself:

When we say that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible, it means there is no legal way to combine code under GPLv2 with code under GPLv3 in a single program.

Source: http://gplv3.fsf.org/rms-why.html

He makes it sound as if it's no big deal, but in reality it really is. That is what makes GPLv3 horrible to work with. EVERYTHING in your program has to be GPLv3 or you can't use the code, so no, there is no possible legal way that GPLv3 code would end up in the kernel unless the entire kernel would be licenced under GPLv3. And that's a simple fact.


Also, I'm wondering, how much experience do you have with writing GPL licensed code?