Re: Contributing LLVM.org patches to gud.el

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:

> * Richard Stallman:
>
>> By replacing most of GCC with non-copylefted code, they would have
>> gone most of the way towards achieving the same result: to make GCC
>> cease to be a reason for all sorts of companies to work on a
>> compiler that always gives users freedom.
>
> I'm pretty sure more work is still done on GCC under NDA than on LLVM,
> and GCC's copyleft license may even play a role in that.
>
> What does user freedom matter if they never even get to use the code?

If they don't get to use the code, they don't pay for it and don't
support it.  They are not worse off for it.

The problem with proprietary code is that its users pay a price without
getting control over their own property.  Code under NDA does not do
that.  It's still not pretty when GNU code ends up in such
circumstances, but the damage is confined as proliferation and
dissemination have to be very limited before the GPL starts rearing its
pretty tail.

-- 
David Kastrup