From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:13:05 +0100 Organization: Organization?!? Message-ID: <87r46s9y6m.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <52FE2985.4070703@yandex.ru> <831tz5daes.fsf@gnu.org> <8738jlohd6.fsf@yandex.ru> <83txc1bl83.fsf@gnu.org> <5300189A.9090208@yandex.ru> <83wqgv9fbj.fsf@gnu.org> <20140216180712.236069f6@forcix.jorgenschaefer.de> <87wqgr4v18.fsf@yandex.ru> <53064BD0.7070009@yandex.ru> <87ha7tr5bo.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87ppmhecd8.fsf@yandex.ru> <87mwhjdq32.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1393265610 27302 80.91.229.3 (24 Feb 2014 18:13:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:13:30 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Feb 24 19:13:38 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WI025-0006gw-OA for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:13:37 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59227 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WI025-0005lS-A9 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:13:37 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:60757) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WI01x-0005kL-1O for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:13:35 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WI01p-0005NW-7P for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:13:28 -0500 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:56908) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WI01o-0005N1-TS for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:13:21 -0500 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WI01m-000601-CH for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:13:18 +0100 Original-Received: from x2f51cea.dyn.telefonica.de ([2.245.28.234]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:13:18 +0100 Original-Received: from dak by x2f51cea.dyn.telefonica.de with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:13:18 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 84 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: x2f51cea.dyn.telefonica.de X-Face: 2FEFf>]>q>2iw=B6, xrUubRI>pR&Ml9=ao@P@i)L:\urd*t9M~y1^:+Y]'C0~{mAl`oQuAl \!3KEIp?*w`|bL5qr,H)LFO6Q=qx~iH4DN; i"; /yuIsqbLLCh/!U#X[S~(5eZ41to5f%E@'ELIi$t^ Vc\LWP@J5p^rst0+('>Er0=^1{]M9!p?&:\z]|;&=NP3AhB!B_bi^]Pfkw User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:EIfuNG4IrpmnwTZfWPLlx1B6BiE= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:169845 Archived-At: Richard Stallman writes: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > Copyleft is needed to defend freedom, which is why Clang is so harmful > > to our freedom. There are already nonfree versions of Clang that do > > tremendous harm to our movement. > > Quite so. And there is no point in foregoing potential benefits in > order to protect assets that we no longer have exactly because Clang's > progress has demolished them. > > As a general statement, that is valid -- but I think you're > overestimating Clang's effects on GCC. "tremendous harm to our movement" were your words. Of course, Clang's effects on GCC are not more or less than which changes we do and permit doing to GCC. But the impact of changes to GCC on the rest of the world is no longer the same due to Clang. Since we now have our house back to ourselves, we can rethink the rules we had to make to keep the worst guests from misbehaving. They've made themselves at home with Clang now (and I think that the GPLv3 was pretty effective with that) and it's just a question of time until the brawls start up there and everybody erupts in proprietary variants and patent fights. > > Allowing nonfree versions of GCC would not help us "win" > > anything that matters -- it would only mean surrender. > > Sure, but nobody was talking about "allowing nonfree versions of > GCC". > > Actually yes they were (though not with those words). Someone cited > my decision against having GCC write a complete syntax tree. That > output would make it easy to use GCC as a front end for nonfree > back-ends. That would be tantamount to making nonfree versions of > GCC. I disagree. M4 output can be used as input for nonfree tools, but if somebody ties GNU M4 into some task with non-free programs, that is not tantamount to making a nonfree version of autoconf. And it's not like a "complete syntax tree" representing all information passed between GCC front- and backend could hope to retain stability between versions. So I think the "complete syntax tree" angle is mostly hypothetical. What's definitely less hypothetical is getting at selected subsets of information. > Splitting up GCC would have the same effect. I'm not sure about that. If a GPLv3 licensed subpackage does a smaller job than the whole of GCC, I think that also the willingness to swallow the accompanying GPLv3 poison pill in return for employing that package would become correspondingly smaller. So I am less than convinced that more modularity would lead to a proportionally larger uptake by proprietary vendors than by the Free Software community itself. > The lookup and completion features that people want can be implemented > by making GCC answer questions sent to it, as Aspell does for M-$. Yes, most definitely. And a special-cased approach like that would more likely than not show better performance than one built from modular building blocks. But the organizational cost is high. You can't hack up and play around and have a working prototype of an Emacs package in weeks. It takes months to arrive at a prototype accessible to people compiling their own GCC, and years for those who install stock versions of GCC. Much of the UNIX philosophy revolves around having a versatile toolbox allowing for rapid prototyping: the most important utility for a good programmer, scientist, or writer is the wastebasket. Being able to do experiments cheaply is one of the tenets of hacking. -- David Kastrup