Re: enabling company-capf support in cfengine.el

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

 > On 19.01.2014 22:19, Stefan Monnier wrote:

 >> AFAIK Clang is Free Software.  So, I don't see a valid reason to
 >> reject inclusion of company-clang or equivalent into Emacs.  If
 >> it's in GNU ELPA it's (virtually) in Emacs already anyway (we use
 >> the same rules for the two, specifically so we can easily move
 >> code from one to the other).

I wonder if Richard would agree that the rules are the same.

Dmitry Gutov writes:

 > Richard's argument in the thread linked by David was not based on 
 > Clang's legal status, other than it being distributed under a 
 > non-copyleft license.

Richard never argues from legal status.  He always argues from
freedom, although legal status is often convenient evidence of the
effect on freedom.

He has no objection to clang (or LLVM) itself, because it *is* free
software.  However, the GNU Project sets higher standards, and Emacs
(and GCC) try to conform to them.  Specifically, *defending* freedom,
including *shutting the door* on cooperation with non-free software:

    Do you mean, [gcc-xml outputs] the entire parse tree in full
    detail?
    Would it be conceivable to feed this into a nonfree back-end?
    Would this mean that nonfree backends could take advantage
    of our free front-ends?

    If so, it is very dangerous -- it would open the door to a
    terrible setback for our defense of users' freedom.  Namely, the
    use of free software as part of compilers that are partly nonfree.
    I don't remember, but I would guess that is why we have refused to
    merge it into GCC.

    LLVM and Clang open the door to the same terrible setback.  Since
    they are not copylefted, their front-ends can be used with nonfree
    back-ends and vice versa.  [from the cited thread]

So his objection is to emission of information that could be
conveniently used by non-free software to integrate free software into
a non-free toolchain.  AIUI, this is basically the same configuration
that led to the confrontation with Steve Jobs over Objective-C, except
that if the output of the compiler front-end is part of the spec, you
would have almost no leverage in court to claim that it's a single
Work which is a derivative of the copyleft front-end.

I don't understand the use of clang here, so I can't help you with
whether company-clang treads on the same territory.  Since the thread
is on "completion", I would guess not.

Disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer, I do not speak for Richard (any
sentence that refers to his opinions, objections, etc should be
considered to be prefaced by "it seems to me"), and I do not agree
with the logic.  So my interpretation may be inaccurate.