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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

RMS -- and perhaps the FSF more generally -- seems more concerned with preventing non-Free software, with creating Free Software as a means to that end, than increasing the volume of Free Software.

To RMS, non-Free software isn't just worse than Free software, its a net harm to society such that it's better to have no software than to have non-Free software. Its even often (apparently, to RMS) better to have no additional software than to have a lot of additional Free Software and some additional non-Free software.

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I wouldn't describe the FSF's position that way (they value Free Software for its own sake, and their goal is that all software should be Free Software), but even if that were their position, I'm arguing that their handling of GCC and refusal to support it as a library directly motivated the creation of LLVM and led to a scenario that better supports the creation of proprietary software.

Providing a GCC library would have significantly lessened the motivation for LLVM: many of the "we need a library" folks would have one, leaving just the "we need a permissively-licensed library" folks, and the "GCC's codebase is awful" folks. (And even some of the latter group might have worked to fix GCC.)

That's not the only thing done wrong with GCC development. The much worse problem is that GCC doesn't really support reviewing and accepting patches; you pretty much have to have commit access to do any significant work on GCC.

> I'm arguing that their handling of GCC and refusal to support it as a library directly motivated the creation of LLVM and led to a scenario that better supports the creation of proprietary software

I'm sure they are well aware of that. I don't see how they could have handled it differently without compromising their core values. Allowing GCC to be wrapped by proprietary bits would be unconscionable since it curtails user freedom (to modify & improve the software).

The differences in core-beliefs between Apple and FSF are irreconcilable: the former is pro-Tivoization and the latter is anti-Tivoization. Your stance on Tivoization ought to be a fair indicator on which side of the fence you stand, and no side will ever be able to convince the other side: at best you can agree to disagree.

You're either with us or against us?

So FSF is basically PETA of software world.

Not really.

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